Building tomorrow’s social platform
There has been a lot of discussion about what is coming next as a new social platform. With the likes of TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, (and oh yes, remember that thing called Facebook?) having been around for a long time, people are wondering what the next big thing will look like.
Well, the challenge is that, very often, when these platforms are created, they are quite different from what they end up becoming. That is the journey visionary CEOs take us through.
While I am probably not visionary enough to know exactly how these platforms will look in five to ten years, there are some characteristics that I believe any contender will need to have in order to become the next big social platform.
Creativity: if there is something I have learned when looking at the progression of successful social apps is that creativity has become more important. While we have seen several apps go viral for a certain amount of time, I believe sustained virality can only take place when the user gets involved in the true creation of the shared output. Instagram is about cool pictures and stories, Tiktok is about self-expression and fun videos, Pinterest is about great collections and hobbies. The output is improved by the technology that those platforms offer (filtering, music, and other cool effects), but ultimately users need to be creative (taking good pictures, dancing well, making fun videos, you name it).
Social graph: sounds obvious, right? Some consumer apps provide users with great tech and their selling proposition can be attractive to start with, but the potential to go viral and generate sustained growth is very much linked to the social graph that is created around that tech. This also leads to strong network effects that are one of the best ways to make a company defensible over time, creating real switching costs to users. This doesn’t necessarily mean that users need to be connected to thousands of people, but it is more about how strong the graph is to keep the network going. Think of Zenly or Snap, the original goal here was not to have a very big amount of people to be connected with, but actually keeping in touch with those you are closer with.
Community: very much related to the social graph, building a strong community early on is key. Users might come first for the tools but they will stay for the community (“come for the tool, stay for the network” as Chris Dixon said). Think of Instagram at the very beginning; I remember using it to filter my pictures and save them to the camera roll to only end up posting on Facebook. Overtime, as I started building a community on Instagram, I began posting too, and I ended up staying on the platform because of my new network. As Eugene Wei describes, even before social networks, Metcalfe’s Law on telecommunications networks shows that the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the number of connected users of the system (n²) and “this can be ported over to social networks […] and explains why growth curves for social networks bends up sharply at the ankle of the classic growth S-curve”. In the past, a community where ‘social status’ could be earned made sense to strengthen the network and keep users (followers, likes, etc.). However, I wonder if we are moving slightly away from that as newer generations care more about spontaneity, genuine content, and self-expression (and less about likes). Communities now help more people make new connections in the virtual world. In the same post, Eugene Wei does a fantastic job at explaining the relevance of social capital and utility, if you are interested in reading more about the topic.
Differentiation: New and different content and formats (including tooling) can help lead the race to create a new social platform that attracts users and retains them. It also helps recognise that content when shared in other external platforms and fosters virality to bring new users to the new social network. People want unique content and the first mover offering that can build a strong advantage.
Engagement and usage: like it or not, social media platforms are used daily by most people, and especially by younger generations. As a founder, you want your users to need to use your product every day. Some might do it a few days a week (and not every day), and that is good, but you want to have enough users that are there every day, several times a day even. Don’t fool yourself with vanity metrics. That said, some social apps have more of a weekly usage to start with, so looking at weekly active users (and WAU/MAU) might make more sense in the early days. However, over time, most of them should aim for strong daily usage (and track DAU/MAU). Another good way to measure engagement and usage is to look at your power users curve. Andrew Chen wrote a great post on this.
Retention: of course, you want to keep your users. Keep track of your weekly retention and understand your users. Cohorts are key for this (as they are for engagement and usage).
Virality and word of mouth: you also want to get a lot of users, and even better if it is for free. Strong viral loops (often product led) and referrals / word of mouth will give you that. Distribution here is key, both externally and within the network (think of TikTok’s watermark or Twitter’s retweets for instance). The K-factor or word of mouth coefficient can help you measure this. Ultimately what you are looking for is a large percentage of organic traffic. That said, making sure acquisition channels work well and are scalable is also important, as they can be a relevant growth lever.
Potential verticalisation: I think we might start seeing more verticalised social apps as interest-based platforms become more popular. Think of gaming. While Discord has become a go-to-platform for gamers, it still misses a lot of the insta-/snap-like sharing features (short videos, filtering and editing, interactions around posting and comments, etc.). On the flip side, insta and snap are not adapted for gamers and remain a ‘me as an individual’ self-expression tool more than a ‘me as a gamer’ community platform.
Branding: while successful social platforms benefit from virality and need to focus less on branding early on, users do relate to the network’s brand. That brand will inspire some of the common values of the community, behaviors, and usages. It also defines its users to a certain extent (think of the demographics of Facebook today vs Snapchat for instance).
Mitigated risks: Considering the type of usage is also important. Some consumer apps are very much exposed to a high risk of bullying or unethical behavior, and I believe those will face a lot of challenges as they scale and eventually will not become the next big social platform. Moderation can always play a big role in controlling unwanted behaviors, and founders very much focused on this are the ones I want to back.
In a world that is more online than ever, building strong virtual communities appears to be more necessary than ever. This, together with the fact that spontaneity is taking over perfection in social networks, can lead to a new generation of social media that goes beyond the usage during downtime, and becomes a new type of society, potentially making us all have a parallel persona of ourselves who lives online. Remember Ready Player One?
If you are building a company in this space or simply are willing to discuss more about the topic, please do reach out!
