Meta is once again taking on its competitors by developing a feature that borrows concepts from others — in this case, BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature for Instagram called “Peek” that would allow users to post authentic pictures that can only be viewed once. While Snapchat popularized the idea of ephemeral content on social media, BeReal led the trend of posting authentic, unedited content. Meta, which is known to copy startups and other tech companies, appears to be doing so once again with the new feature.
The social media company confirmed to TechCrunch on Friday that the feature, which was first spotted by reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, is an internal prototype and isn’t being tested externally.
Peek appears to be a more ephemeral version of Stories, which can be viewed for 24 hours. A photo shared via a Peek would have to be taken with your camera in the moment, as you wouldn’t be able to upload an image from your camera gallery, according to a screenshot shared by Paluzzi. Plus, you wouldn’t be able to edit the photo or add a filter, which is a concept that became popular via the rise of BeReal.
