How BeReal got its users
Paid ambassadors on dozens of US campuses, then a friend-invite viral loop. The channel was bought before it went viral.
Read from signals. Consistent with what is publicly observable, but nobody confirmed it. Check before you quote it.
Reproducible, but it will cost you real money, real months, or a skill you may not have.
The edge you do not have: A post-Covid window where Instagram fatigue was at its peak
- Local social density that makes the product work
- Growth that spreads outward
- A product with no solo value
- Cash before traction
Creators and UGC in 2026
The most effective channel in consumer mobile today, and the most saturated at the top end.
Everything on this channel →The play
4 steps, in the order they ran them.
- 1
Recruit paid ambassadors inside closed groups with high social density
- 2
Pay per signup generated, not per post
- 3
Saturate one campus before moving to the next
- 4
Make the product useless alone so the invite is forced
The product itself
read from bereal.com, live“BeReal”
Run this against your own product
Carries the play above, and is written to tell you no when this channel is out of reach for you.
The same twelve channels as an agent skill. It reads your repository and eliminates what you cannot run. Open source, MIT.
curl -o ~/.claude/skills/howtodistribute/SKILL.md https://howtodistribute.com/skill.md
How big it got
Explosive growth in 2022, acquired in 2024
What else they ran
The evidence1 checkable
- Campus ambassador program covered by the press
They ran the same play
Want this verdict on your product?
Describe it. You get back the channel I would run in your place, the 30-day plan, and the number at which you stop.