Desenvolvimento de aplicativos de redes sociais

The very first question a startup of a new social networking application should answer: "Do users need another application on their smartphone?" Thousands of entrepreneurs give an affirmative answer every year, hundreds create them, and a few become headliners. And, of course, headliners tempt new entrepreneurs to try to repeat their success. So the more attractive it is for us to consider the path a beginner needs to go through when developing a social network application.

Let's pay tribute to the companies at the origins of social networks and their founders, who have become icons of IT entrepreneurs worldwide. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram social networks, WhatsApp messenger, has captured the attention of more than 60% of the world's population. You could not be surprised by this phenomenon because the Coca-Cola brand is probably no less famous in the world. But Facebook made this way so quickly; It took only 17 years to grow from a student startup to the seventh global public company in market capitalization. Equally strikingly, Facebook was able to take users away from MySpace, which at that time was comparable to Facebook now, in just two years after its start.

During Facebook's reign, many competitors tried to deprive it of the crown, but no one has yet been able to repeat the success of its rapid rise completely. But attempts to occupy some niches that Facebook management did not have time to pay attention to were successful. Quite simple, compared to their older brother, ideas of social networks have allowed hundreds of companies to attract a piece of users' attention to their services. And as it turned out, this piece is sweet enough to continue to fight for its place in the market.

If you look closely at the history of new successful social networks, you will notice that they all tried to stand out somehow, offering new services and features. The rude restriction of Twitter messages was in demand not because someone forced people to write long posts on Facebook. It turned out that a short twit makes the author think to express only the essence of the event. Readers also appreciated the possibility of avoiding fatigue from reading endless long posts. The benefits for everyone turned out to be so noticeable that today it already seems that Twitter is perceived as close in scale to Facebook today. This view is not valid because Twitter's market capitalization is almost thirty times smaller. But it hardly worries investors a lot as the company consistently generates good profits.

The need for social media applications

It's no secret that people worldwide spend an average of 2 hours 25 minutes a day on social networks. Interestingly, this time varies significantly for developed and developing countries. For example, users in the United States spend 2 hours and 3 minutes a day, while Philippine residents seem addicted to social networks and spend 3 hours 53 minutes on them.

These figures can be helpful when choosing a social network idea. Residents of developed countries are more focused on social interaction's business and information aspects. Developing countries have enormous potential due to growing Internet access; the share of social network users from Asia is already more than 60%. A very young and active audience is looking for more entertainment on social networks as an inexpensive replacement for an accessible offline information environment.

The fact remains unchanged, and people like to spend time on social networks for various reasons. Not surprisingly, the market would strive to meet this need. Perhaps someday, we will suddenly find ourselves in a single metaverse from Meta. But today, the social media market is more like the oceans, in which the captains of many seiners try to find and catch large schools of fish with nets.

Social networks received additional incentives after the pandemic began. Limiting social contacts and new administrative barriers have made social networks almost the only way to maintain close relationships.

Therefore, we argue that creating an application for social networks today is still a profitable idea, as the market is full of valuable users.

The right approach to creating a social network application

Step 1: Identifying the niche of the social network application and target audience

First of all, you never have to try to capture all markets at once. So far, no one has been able to do it. Instead, focus your attention on finding an idea that may be close to a specific group of users. At the same time, you should consider that rarely does the founder fully understand the clear outlines of the final product at the first stages of development. It is not a problem if the software developer understands this and can respond flexibly to customer requests.

Secondly, you need an application development strategy and consider that market needs are changing very quickly; Competitors' offers appear, and you should be ready to meet new user needs gradually.

All successful social networks remain so because they can continuously improve their properties. And since we mentioned Twitter, let's remember that it later added linked video and photos and doubled the allowable length of tweets. The WhatsApp example, which has evolved from a status exchange application to a full-fledged messenger, is also indicative. It is interesting to study the experience of Snapchat, which was initially popular among students, but now its primary users are teenagers.

Choosing the right niche is the main thing, but don't be afraid that the niche changes over time.

Step 2: Evaluation of the selected niche

Reduce the risk of making a wrong decision and do marketing research. You should not fully trust a subjective opinion; first impressions can be deceiving. A good idea may turn out to be an improved version of the existing product. Creating a matrix of offers will allow you to see the market as a whole and accurately position your project.

As a result, you should be sure that your application is unique and fills a free niche, and not just tries to oust existing applications from the market.

Step 3: Choosing a monetization method

The ultimate goal of developing a social network application is to create a sustainable, profitable business. Therefore, it is necessary to explore all the possibilities of generating income. There are some dangers here; for example, investors carry on favoring the well-known researchers’ social network ResearchGate for thirteen years, but monetization does not work yet. There are few such examples in the world, and you don't have to expect to be among them.

Some models of making money on social networks are well known but unavailable to most startups. For example, all major social networks already have big user data to target ads (Facebook, Instagram) or sell API access to user messages (Twitter). However, no independent startup will be able to access such data directly, so it should count on more common methods:

The freemium model is the most common today. It allows users to register for free and use all essential functions without restrictions. This approach is a prerequisite for attracting new users. However, access to premium services is available only for an additional fee. Naturally, different social networks offer various services, but the main one is to increase traffic to the user's page. Some dating sites have built the main income channel on this, offering premium service literally for a dollar per month.
The advertising model is prevalent and can fully solve all monetization issues. However, restraint will not hurt; remember the MySpace falling story. Modern users will not appreciate turning your application into an advertising catalog and will quickly leave you. In a sense, an example may be the YouTube model, when income comes either from the advertiser when displaying advertising inserts or from the users themselves who paid for premium access. If your application's traffic is not very large to attract advertisers directly, you can use Google Ads tools. Nothing prevents you from collecting users’ data, such as age, gender, location, and interests. The only question is how long you will need to collect enough volume to sell targeted advertising.

Step 4: Design selection and interface development

The laconic design combined with unique features can immediately attract the audience’s attention. Look, Snapchat instantly offers to start using funny lenses. If the lens turns out to be attractive, the user desires to share it with friends. Thus, a chain of actions involves a new user in social interaction. User experience determines the success or failure of a new social media application.

A cluttered and poorly organized interface layout can alienate potential users. But in addition to appearance, users may face poorly functioning internal algorithms for managing interaction. For example, a bad search result display can immediately cause a lousy opinion.

Take into account the interests of each user of the application, as any social network is an equal community. Therefore, any priority imbalance towards any user group will lead to an outflow of users from other groups. As a result, your ship may fall on the side and sink.

Step 5: Idea testing

As already noted, the path from the initial idea to full implementation can be winding. Therefore, it makes sense to consider application development from a simple MVP model to a full-featured application.

Contrary to traditional product development, which usually includes a long, thoughtful incubation period and strives for product excellence, the goal of MVP is to start the learning process, not finish it. Unlike a prototype or conceptual test, MVP tests fundamental business hypotheses. It does not require an in-depth study of all design elements but allows you to identify shortcomings in the functional part and direct efforts to correct them.

MVP is also a way to test the market in a less complex environment and avoid the risk of encountering technical problems that arise with the inclusion of all the application functions. In addition, focus user groups can try out a less cluttered application.

When choosing functions for MVP, you need to create a preference sheet. After that, all others, except the main ones, can wait for their turn.

Step 6: User feedback

After the app’s launch, the application creators enter into a close relationship with users. You can't create a product that will satisfy everyone. But satisfied users usually do not give feedback. Therefore, prepare tools for analyzing negative reviews.

It is unlikely that a miracle will happen; most likely, you will not be able to consider all the comments, but you will have an idea in which direction to develop the product further. In addition, when choosing the priority of including new features, you will consider users’ opinions, which will increase their loyalty to your application.

Feedback from users will also give you time to collect accurate analytics on the use of the application. For example, sometimes users cannot accurately describe what they do not like, but the collected information about user actions in the application can allow developers to see weaknesses.

Mandatory functions of the social media application

Users are already used to habitual tasks in social networks. Some of them are mandatory in any social media application despite some differences.

Registration allows users to register with various options, such as email and password, Facebook, Google, Apple, or phone number. After registration, the user can sometimes read a brief interactive guide to using the application.
A user profile is an essential part of any application. High individualization of the profile allows the user to express their condition and field of interest best. Ultimately, the information from the profile enables users to find each other and form stable communities.
The news feed is a litmus paper of quality. Most users are on social networks to consume content, so it is essential to personalize the news feed. Of course, no one does it manually, but intelligent ranking and artificial intelligence today cope with this task quite well.
Search allows users to systematize content consumption. It is difficult to imagine a modern social network where it is impossible to search for people or content. It would probably be just a TV, but the TV has already been invented before!
Chat provides users with social interaction mechanisms. Text, picture, video — all this allows the user to feel that he has a voice among other voices.
Content Creator is an integral part of the application if networking starts with it. Such an example is Snapchat. The capabilities of modern smartphones allow you to process videos and photos within the application and make it customary to create content on a mobile device.
Integration with other social networks is magical, as content accumulation is the second most important task after collecting enough new users. Therefore, allow users to share already created content and fill the news feed.
Push notifications allow users to stay in touch. Notifications also increase user engagement by reporting new events in the feed and messages in chat rooms. From the point of view of the social network owner, the function constantly reminds the user of the application and motivates them to use it more often.

Social network application creation platform

Creating a mobile network application can be divided into creating a mobile application for the user, and a server-side for transferring, processing, and storing all data.

Developing a mobile application is not an extremely difficult task since Android and iOS dominate the market. Therefore, mobile app developers always use prescribed frameworks and follow rigid guidelines.

The backend of the mobile network application has no such restrictions, and it is there that the developer can show his competence. Choosing a platform, you should exclude Drag & Drop options, as well as ready-made Open Source solutions. This advice is due to the critical limitations of such systems in terms of performance, scalability, functionality, and data processing security issues.

Admittedly, you will find few offers among custom solutions, as creating a new platform is an extraordinary task. The QSNE platform is a basis for building the server software part and offers the infrastructure for its deployment. The functionality of the platform is massive:

Built-in support for all world languages and correction tools for translators, automatic user language detection with the possibility of subsequent customization, translations of publications and user comments, as well as other content, into readers languages;
The built-in billing system can operate more than a hundred different currencies, virtual and national, cross-rates calculation, taking into account exchange processing centers and the rates of various central banks, provides the functionality of the payment system;
X Networks file cloud can store and configure file access for users. We provide storage and access capabilities similar to Google Drive + the ability to exchange files, attach them to publications or other objects. This is extremely important because social networks and complex portals are content generators;
Billing and payment control systems integrated with notification services;
Artificial intelligence Qwerty AI (flexible capabilities, technical user support, intelligent ranking of publications);
News aggregation from authoritative sources (for each project, we define a list of "authorities");
Possibilities of a marketplace, automation of sales and logistics, as well as internal transaction arbitration — we can develop your project into an analog of AliExpress;
Smart contracts, «safe transactions, » internal arbitration service;
A robust internal mail server provides sending messages and mailing automation that checks the correctness of addresses as well as overflowing mailboxes;
Protection systems against DDOS and other types of attacks with automatic notification of providers (by the way, X Networks owns the testddos.com service for testing websites’ load resistance);
Modules for interacting with SMS and phone services;
Protecting accounts from hacking, logging permissions, and two-factor authentication. The QSNE security system is one of the critical blocks of the platform;
The ability to manage subscriptions to users and communities;
Aggressive data caching (similar to Facebook);
Flexible privacy settings for users and their publications;
Powerful multi-threaded search engine;
Creation of communities (open and closed pages, as well as professional and "by subscription");
Internal messenger (instant messaging system), integrated with QAIM, with the capabilities of artificial intelligence;
The antivirus scan of published content (SDK over 20 antiviruses), intelligent pre-moderation;
End-to-end tagging of any content and data in the flow of information;
Shortening link service system;
Protection against bots and parsing (verification of user actions);
SMM tools;

The cost of creating a social network platform

To quickly create a product with unique features, you need to spend millions of dollars developing a new platform. Using the QSNE platform from X Networks will be more realistic. And although the cost of development may exceed one hundred thousand dollars, it will still be equal to or lower than the cost of finalizing the Open Source platform. Notably, the QSNE platform allows you to create a social network within a tightly agreed time frame, giving you a competitive advantage in the hot social networks market. But each project is unique with its own set of functions, make a preliminary assessment or contact X Networks for advice.