How to Create a Social Media App!?
have a look on this infographic to know better on how much it costs to develop a social media apps (basic functionality and one platform: Android or iOS):
social media app development
How to create a social media app
1. Connection with existing social networks
The fewer steps separate the user from full interaction with an application, the better. They have already left their data in a bunch of other social media apps; there is no need to force them to do it again. It is better to narrow the path to the new experience with a “Connect to” or “Sign in using” button one of the existing applications.
2. Opportunities for self-expression
Each user wants to feel unique and show the world how creative, extraordinary and original they are. The social media app should include some features that can help with this, such as customizing profile pictures, backgrounds, nicknames, etc.
3. Creating a network
Any social network makes sense to the user only if there are friends or interesting people. Therefore, developers of social media applications must work with the perfect algorithm of the friend graph and the system that allows to invite friends with one click.
4. Organization of the news feed
Almost all social networks require news sources. Content is king, and for good reason. Users generate a huge amount of data by themselves: logs, statuses, uploads of videos, audio and photos. Even more, they share someone else’s content. It allows you to assert yourself and express your opinion (which is one of the benefits of social media: you can make yourself heard).
When we start to develop a social media application for Android and iOS, we take it into account and offer the organization of the news service that best suits the specificity of the social media application.
5. Interaction with other services
To provide your customers with a better user experience when interacting with the platform, you must create a system to integrate existing services into your network. In this way, users do not have to choose between numerous services because they are already interconnected. Speaking of third-party services, we mean:
Relationship networks
Relationship Networks are to build communication between people. There are several categories: personal networks (Facebook), professional networks (Linkedin) and dating services (Badoo or Tinder app).
Media sharing networks
This type of social media gives users the opportunity to exchange video and photo content. Many media sharing networks like Flickr, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Vimeo, Snapchat. A distinctive feature is the content scale. For example, some offer to post short videos; others allow you to create your own video channel.
Online Reviews
These social networks are a huge database that helps users gather all the information necessary to make purchasing decisions. For example, Yelp and Urbanspoon are based on geolocation and the ability to leave comments and recommendations about local businesses.
Discussion forums
Communities, forums, and question and answer services are one of the earliest forms of social media. Quora, Reddit, and Digg included in Modern representatives of the Discussion forms. At the core of the interaction between users is the need to share knowledge.
Social publishing platforms
For this type of social networking services related to blogging and microblogging platforms where users create and publish text and multimedia content. These include such popular platforms as Twitter, Medium, and Tumblr.
Bookmarking sites
StumbleUpon, Pinterest, Flipboard are services where the user collects the content in the personal library, which can be followed by other members of the community. In general, these social media study interests to offer more relevant content.
Interest-based networks
The most attractive opportunity social media provides is to find like-minded people with similar interests. For example, Last.fm.
The option of integrating your service into all existing networks should also be considered so that user posts on your social media application can be crossed over to other social networks. It will bring a user’s friends to your social network.
6. Private communication
No matter how exciting the public user interaction experience is, there are always things that need to be discussed in private. Social media applications must contain built-in services for secure private communication. In this way, your users will not go to third-party resources and will spend more time on your application.
Read our article to learn why data privacy is important.
So you have an application idea, you understand the essentials of the application. Whats Next? How to make a social media application? We proceed to the direct creation of applications.
How To Develop A Social Media App MVP?
The scope of a social media app is huge and the project would definitely be large-scale. In cases like these, it is advisable to start with the MVP or minimum viable product. Basically, an MVP is a version of the product that has a minimal set of basic functions that allows you to quickly get your product to market so that you can test it in the real market. This way, as an app developer or creator, you can announce and launch a product version very quickly and the amount of time and money you save in this way is substantial. Once the MVP you released goes through the entire validation process, the product can move to the finalization stage and advanced features can be added, the design can be worked on, and the UI / UX can be improved. Once this is done, the application or final product is ready to be released for a new cycle of rigorous testing and validation processes.
Two of the most important things to consider to get your MVP off to a positive note are user engagement and analytics tools. The main functionality of the tool is of course of primary importance and is a must-have in your MVP, but it is not advisable to completely ignore the user engagement aspect. It is quite common in the MVP development process to completely ignore or downplay the user engagement factor. Do not forget that it is not enough for someone to install your application on their device; It is a fact that more than 90% of these users would abandon at some point.
The idea of launching an MVP is to get as much data as possible. It should help you collect information about user behavior and requirements, which may include smart onboarding, integration with other existing social media platforms, networks and maybe apps, gamification, and user re-engagement with push notifications and emails. . In order to accomplish any of this, it is vital that the MVP you publish is optimized for user retention.
Mobile analytics helps you get real-time data from your own app. This data retrieved through mobile analytics would include the number of active users, their activity on the app, preferences, and behavioral trend analysis. For this purpose, you can even use third-party mobile analytics tools like Google Analytics, Flurry, or Localytics, as they can ease the process of trying to make sense of all this data at your disposal. Through these mobile analytics tools and their findings, you will be able to gain useful insights into what your users really expect from a product like yours, which in turn will help you improve your product and shape it to fit these expectations. and requirements. .
The UI / UX design depends on the type of product you are creating, however there is an important element that should be a part of developing a successful application: quality assurance. There are a large number of devices on the market, each with different screen resolutions and versions of mobile operating systems. Conducting intensive testing processes helps you optimize your application for the best compatibility with the most popular environments and devices. Apart from the functional aspect of the application, the application must also go through load testing so that the application is verified to work equally well, whether there is one user active at a time or 1,000,000. For social media applications in particular, this type of testing takes on great importance.
Must Have Features for a Social Media App MVP
Registration
This should allow the user to create a new account or sign in to an existing account via social networks.
Create and edit personal profile
It allows users to add, edit or remove personal data they keep in their personal profile.
Post creation
This should allow the user to create a post with text, pictures or both. This should allow the user to refer to people and add tags.
Feed
Users should be able to expose, like and comment on any kind of feed by following or subscribing one way or another.
Social characteristics
Since this is often a social media app MVP, it should allow users to share the maximum amount content as they need and also invite friends from other social media channels.
Message
Users should be able to manage private messages, with the option to exchange photos. This feature of sending photos in private message can also be added later.
The Basic Elements Or Features Of A Social Media App
Now we all know what a social media app should do and what it can offer to users who decide to join it. However, as someone planning to build a social media app, there are more things you need to know and understand before you start planning the development and design of your own.
Incorporation into existing social networks
Right at the beginning, when you are just getting started, you should discover and offer an easy and convenient way to access the product or application you are creating, so that potential users have the opportunity to be exposed. In case you are planning to create a social media app, registering with other social media accounts can help you speed up the process. Nowadays, most of your target users definitely use different social media channels like Facebook, Twitter or Google+ and when you integrate your application to them the feature allows users to sign up or sign up with you in a really short time. Apart from this, when you offer an additional function and offer users an option or possibility to import their data and contacts from other networks, you are opening up to the possibility of obtaining a large number of users of your application.
Registry
At a minimum, this feature should allow the interested user to sign up for your app, create a new account, and sign up. When you allow potential users to sign up using your social media profiles or identifiers, the ease of the process is greatly increased and it turns out to be the least time consuming option. But while you’re at it, you need to stop and ask yourself a crucial question: if you really want to include a third-party social network in yours. While Facebook or Google+’s inclusion strategy can be great when you’re developing a niche app, it would be a huge mistake if you said you plan to launch your social media app in competition with these established players.
User / account profile
The personal profile or account that a user creates on your social media application is of great importance to you and other users. This personal profile that the user creates helps users to identify themselves which contributes greatly to affirming the credibility of the data or any other content that they would later share on the platform. There are several ways to do this, you can offer to create a short and simple profile containing the image or photo display (DP), the username and a short bio written by them. You can also choose to help them create a detailed profile that reveals much more about the user, including their interests, preferences, location, the number of users in their circle of friends or followers, and even their recent activity.
Opportunity to make connections
social media app is meant for main on making Connections. The social media application must have an option or element that allows the user to make “friends”, get “followers” or “follow” other users on the platform. It is this element that would essentially make your app a social media app. When it comes to befriending someone on social media, the features involve mutual consent and it is a two-way process, while when it comes to following someone, it is a one-way process. As another option, users can also connect with people based on common interests, groups they belong to, or their location. There are some applications that allow users to add their friends from other connected networks.
Generate and publish original content and share
One of the most important elements for the social media application is the opportunity for users to create, upload and share any type of content, be it text, images, videos, audio or a combination of some or all. . Here you have the option to decide how complex you want this piece to be. Do you want it to be something basic and simple like Twitter, where the amount of content you can share is limited to 290 characters? The other way to go is to go big and offer more elaborate possibilities, including photo filters, unique stickers or live stream and much more like Facebook. The iconic social media app, Snapchat, spawned one of the newest trends where posts have a limited lifespan, meaning that posts on these types of platforms stay only for a specific time, after which they disappear. You have the freedom to brainstorm here and set your own trend with unique twists and features.
News feed
Newsfeed means that all types of content are detected or exposed. Generally, Newsfeed contains all updates from your connections on the platform and from the subscriptions you have signed up for, this is enriched by tapping in some content that is trending on the platforms and from users unregistered users in your social media app. This content, which appears in the newsfeed, is displayed chronologically or in the order of importance in the individual user’s opinion. The latter can only be achieved by using complex algorithms intended to customize the feed according to the user. Popular social media apps, including Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, rank their newsfeed in order of importance. Then there are some apps that provide personalized suggestions for the content you want to explore, which is accomplished with the help of machine learning algorithms that determine your preferences and interests.
Interaction between users & content
This element is very important when you allow your users to interact with the content and they can ‘Like’, ‘Repost’, ‘Comment’, ‘Share’ or ‘Reply’, they are engaged and interact longer in the app, instead of browsing and navigating from it Instead of to. The motivation to create, post or share any content comes from knowing who has seen it and when they interact with what you have posted, it further motivates you to continue the process of creating a positive cycle of events.
Search reinforced with hints
When you add a search element to your app, you allow your users to expand their existing networks and find other content that they enjoy exploring and sharing. This element allows users to search for other users by specifying search criteria such as name, age, gender, location, interests and more. It also gives them the opportunity to see relevant groups that are not even known to exist. When you allow a user to perform a contextual search, you help them find relevant content, and in this case the hashtag or keyword search feature is actually useful. Pinterest made good use of this element and enabled the advanced search option. Content in Pinterest is segmented by topic, which means you can go to a specific section like Gardening or DIY if you want and explore all the relevant content and images. Additionally, you can also use keyword search when you are looking for something specific.
Private or direct message
This is a topic that takes time for you to think about. There are some social media sites that do not use this element, however, as Chat’s rule takes engagement levels to a whole new level. You can use this element to maintain a private conversation with your connections or a direct conversation with the managers of the business page or group. The use of this element varies from one platform to another, but not everyone uses this element on Twitter, the chat option on Facebook became so hugely popular that they had to launch a special messenger app.
Interested groups
It’s natural for people to look for other people who share their interests. So, if you are a dog lover, you may be interested in meeting other dog ts enthusiasts.
When your social media app allows like-minded people to come together, it gives them a lot more opportunity to share their interests, discuss details, motivate each other to take their interests further. The concept of community binds people together and gives them access to this community.
Advanced elements
Once you have advanced your path in the early stages, the following advanced activities and elements are a good way to increase customer engagement.
Push notifications
Geo-tagging & check-ins
Elements of Gamification (as a group application)
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