What Makes Social Networking Apps Successful?

Beside the connections with friends, colleagues, family, and strangers, social media gradually helps brands to connect with the users and audience.

Current estimates peg the total number of social media users worldwide at 4.20 billion in 2021. While the uninitiated connect the rise of social networks with the mass production of smartphones and the overarching reach of free internet, that is far from the truth. The actual evidence points to a rather slew of social media app features plugged-in to play around with the chemistry of the human brain. 

Types of Social Media Platforms 

We can classify social networks by their TG in the following brackets: 

1.  Network building apps

This encompasses Facebook, Twitter, and the LinkedIns of the world. Their USP is connecting people on either a personal or professional front. 

2. Media sharing apps 

Networking isn’t all about opinion exchanges. Smartphones metamorphose our feelings into shareable content be it videos, images, or articles. This category focuses on such media sharing and has names like YouTube, Imgur, and Pinterest. 

3. Discussion boards

You have multiple alternatives to voice questions, answers, and opinion pieces on networks like Quora, Reddit, StackOverflow, and lest we forget, Yahoo! Where it all began. 

4. Business review forums 

Feel you’ve been duped by a brand? Shout out your story to the world and offer a tell-all to others in the community. Websites offering such services include Yelp, Business.com, and the Expressit App. 

5. Company review platforms 

Since we are reviewing our purchase decisions, how about employers! This category has opened Pandora’s box in letting out insider information to the public. Examples include Glassdoor, Indeed, and the Muse. 

6. Blogging networks 

Content will always be the king. Networks like Medium, and Steemit reward writers for their work amplifying the unbending power of the letter. 

7. Relationship networks 

Their goal is to match profiles based on the registered biodata. From dating to hitchhiking, and rent-sharing, this bracket includes sites like Tinder, Badoo, and Airbnb. 

Features Of Social Media Apps 

If you are budgeting funds for the cost of social media app development, then it is better to first go to the drawing board and finalize the app’s features. This is not an overnight procedure but a well-defined loop that involves project management, custom development, business analysis, and quality assurance. Yet, speaking strictly of features some are universal in apps of such nature. 

In our experience, the following specifications make the cut for all social networking apps of the day: 

The platform must support multi-media file sharing 

If you plan to go global, then supporting target-region languages is highly recommended. 

Members should be able to customize their profiles and make public only the necessary facets of personal info. 

Send reminders to people of picking up where they dropped off. 

This is more of a capability than a feature, the extent of which is directed by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. 

In trying to create social media apps, ensure that they allow cross-platform content sharing. 

This is the new audio based social media app feature. In audio only feature, the users are able to enter the chatroom only if they are invited. Example: Clubhouse

One of the greatest advantages of social media is that people get to discover new content. Take advantage of this yearning and offer a limitless supply of scrollable dope.

Final Thoughts

Businesses need to find the right balance of features, functionality and design for their specific business objectives. There are many resources available on how to create a successful social networking app if your company is looking into this type of platform.

Appinventiv, an enterprise business intelligence solutions company can help you research what other platforms have done well in order to inform your own strategy and we’ll also be able to provide insights about which types of users will best engage with your product based on our user analytics tools and data science expertise.