In today’s highly technological world, new forms of communication channels emerge and get updated virtually on a daily basis. As a result, what felt like completely unnecessary and superfluous services turn out to be something we can hardly live without.
Think of Facebook or Viber or Telegram. Chances are good that you couldn’t see how great these apps were as they appeared on the marker in the first place. After all, why would we need Telegram if we already have SMS? How would we benefit from Instagram if we already have Facebook to share our photos with friends? Who would be using Twitter and it’s 140 symbols if there are blog platforms with no word count limit? All these questions are completely reasonable. However, time proved that each and every app mentioned above is not only necessary but also game-changing in a certain way.
What’s on the market and why you should make a social media app
Let’s face it: social apps are now an inherent part of our lives. In fact, almost eight-in-ten Internet users in the US are on Facebook, and 76 percent of them report visiting this social network every day. What’s more, almost 30 percent of online Americans use Instagram and the trend seems to be gaining momentum. It would be ridiculous to disagree that social media are already a well-established form of business, but it’s also true that the trend continues to be on the rise.
Based on the situation, it comes as no surprise that the most forward-looking entrepreneurs bet on social networks as another business opportunity. While some of them decide to make a social media app of their own, others choose to build unique solutions based on integration with current superstar social media. For instance, companies like Domino’s or TripAdvisor have successfully developed chatbots that get integrated with the Facebook messenger. Users can enjoy the services of both companies without the need of leaving their messengers. So whatever way you slice it, social media apps run the party.
In case you’re still not sure that it might be a great idea to create a social media app, then you should take a look at how five most popular social media apps are doing at the moment. So let’s dive into the topic and see all the ins and outs of the social media apps business.
One of the first social media apps and one of the greatest, Facebook has over 1.86 billion active users per month. In case that sounds not very impressive, you need to also know that the number of active users has been growing approximately by 17 percent annually for the last years. To translate it into something you can easily comprehend, it means that five new Facebook user profiles are created every single second. Facebook has been ruling supreme for many years in a row holding its stable 18 percent of market share.
Snapchat
In case you’ve never heard and never used this social media app, here is your quick intro to what it is and what it does. To cut a long story short, Snapchat is the third most popular social network in the world and it’s based on the idea of allowing users to send photo messages that get automatically deleted after being viewed. At the moment, the value of Snapchat is $10 billion, which is not impressive compared to Facebook’s $328 billion, but is still a boatload of money.
Telegram
Emerged only a few years ago, Telegram has already gained a popularity all around the globe. It turns out that today this social network app has more than 100 million active users, and as much as 15 billion messages are sent via Telegram daily. Don’t be fooled by the fact that Telegram is only the sixth most popular messaging app in the world right now. Being used as the educational and entertainment channel apart from its major messaging purpose, Telegram is certainly making its way up.
What a great idea it was to make a social media app for professional connections. It seems like someone has got it exceptionally right about what people needed and created an app to make these needs met. Although not as popular as Facebook or Instagram, LinkedIn has over 430 million registered users and 40 percent of them report using the app on a daily basis. A telling example of how the idea to make a social media app can end up in something useful and popular around the world.
One more mobile app we could not help but mention is Instagram. According to the most recent data available, the global mobile revenues of Instagram have reached $2,81 billion. Given that 30 percent of all Internet users are now on Instagram and as much as 60 percent of these people use the app every day, it’s not a big surprise that the revenue is expected to reach $5 billion by 2018.
What common functions all social media apps have?
Of course, social media apps are different and there is no one-size-fits-all solution that will guarantee a worldwide success if you decide to make a social media app. However, there are some features all social media seem to have in common, we strongly encourage you to consider making them a part of your future app too.
Profile Creation
Although this part is an obvious thing to do, we mention it here because its development tends to be a big part of app developer’s job. The core idea of social networks is that people can make their representation on these platforms, which means they should be able to create and customize their user profiles.
Connections and Groups
Social media apps are hardly possible to imagine without connections and groups. Just like it happens in the real world, Internet users tend to friend and unfriend people as well as create and join groups based on common interests, profession, location, and other factors. Make sure to create a social media app that supports this feature.
Feed
In today’s world, content is king. With so many useful and interesting information available on the Internet these days, we cannot help but share some piece of news or great articles or funny pics with our friends. To make your future users spend more time on your app, make it possible for them to search for content and share it with connections.
Private Messaging
It would be rather strange to create a social media app where people cannot talk to each other privately. That’s why you should ensure that your app has a private messaging tool that is both user-friendly and secure in terms of privacy.
Photo and video content creation
Since the vast majority of modern smartphones boasts great cameras, taking pictures and recording videos has become a daily habit for millions of people. Don’t force your users to leave your app in order to share a photo via Facebook Messenger or Telegram. Make a social media app with an in-built function of photo and video creation, and, in the long run, you’ll be glad that you did.
Common principles of creating a social media app
As for the process you need to go through in order to create a social media app, the steps are pretty much the same as for any other mobile app. You need to take care of basic steps, including the creation of the overall concept, taking care UX/UI design, development of frontend and backend, as well as making sure the quality of the end product meets the industry standards and your own expectations.
However, there are some major principles that are only applicable to social media apps. Here is the list of them:
- Make it intuitive and simple in use. Nobody likes to feel like a fool, but bad UX and UI might force your users to be mad at themselves as they need to spend a couple of minutes to realize how things work.
- Taking care of privacy is a top priority. When you share something very personal with your close friend via a social media app, you want to be sure your secrets won’t end up available to the public. That’s why your app needs to be as secure and protected as possible.
- Integrate with other apps and useful data sources. If you choose to follow this principle, you’ll be able to optimize data feeds from plenty of legacy sources without a need to write even a line of code. Needless to say, it will save you plenty of time and effort in the long run.
Wrapping up…
There are strong grounds to believe that the niche of social media is one of the fastest growing and most promising markets. Proceeding from this, today might be the best time to make a social media app that offers something new and unique. All you need to do is a fresh idea, certain budget or fund raising skills, and a team of professional mobile app developers to help you create the app of the highest standards.
Adoriasoft has over 8 years of experience in professional mobile app development, including the development of social apps and social media integrations of various complexity. So if you plan to make a social media app contact Adoriasoft for a free estimate of your project. We’re the developers that are able to implement your social media app idea on your budget and within your time.