Is there a need for social media apps like Facebook in a market dominated by just a few players? After Clubhouse’s presentation, takeoff, and fall, the answer is yes. And it’s not just the fact that the market itself is not saturated (only half of the world’s population uses social networks), but also the inability of large social networks to cover all aspects of human behavior. The business model of existing social media apps like Facebook limits their creativity, so every year, a shiny new startup hits the headlines. And then, it gets the attention of investors.

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How to make an app like Facebook: development process

It is very important to understand who the users of your social media app will be. Each social media app has a different portrait of its audience.

For example, Facebook`s audience is mostly people with good education and income, often the owners of mobile devices from Apple.

A portrait of the target audience helps to evaluate its needs, wishes, and opportunities to develop an application with appropriate functionality which will be interesting and necessary for the potential user. The main task of competent planning of the functionality is to make a potential customer loyal.

The market of mobile applications and social networks is flooded with offers. It is important not to add to the general mass of the 100500th typical application but to offer the audience exactly something new. The idea is the main factor in the way of the social media app’s success.

Social media app development

After discussing the idea and analyzing the audience, market, etc., a fairly standard sequence of development stages is carried out according to the model chosen.

It is important to develop a user-friendly interface and carry out competent software development for maximum performance of the application.

As a result, you get a new ready-to-use mobile social media app, which is published in stores.

It is very important to work with the audience of your mobile social media app and be aware of their wishes to process this information in a timely manner.

It is important to hear the opinions and desires of the users to constantly improve the app. This helps to increase the number of regular and new users. The larger the audience, the easier it is to achieve the goals for which the application was created.

To understand how to create a social media app like Facebook, you should have a list of necessary features.

Quick and easy registration

Your users are most likely more comfortable registering with an existing Google, Apple, or Facebook account. Don’t miss this opportunity to simplify the process of getting to know your social media app and reduce your path to a new experience to a single button, such as “Sign in with”. It’s not unreasonable to use access to user contacts so a new user can quickly share a new experience with friends and expand your audience.

Customizable personal profile

Let each user express how they feel at the moment. Easily changing the nickname, image, color theme, and flexible page settings make users feel like creators right away. Additional sections such as interests, preferences, location, education, marital status, and recent activities will also be helpful. Your social media app, like Facebook, should have access to your mobile device’s camera and geolocation module.

Connecting people

Being able to connect with people based on interests means increasing the popularity of your social media app. Therefore, the app should provide one-click access to features such as “add to friends” or “subscribe”. Keep in mind that many apps have useful features for inviting new users to your social media app.

News feed

Content on social media apps is essential to keep users’ attention. You can’t organically keep your audience growing for a long time if you don’t provide them with a good newsfeed. Such a feed is formed in two ways – by the automatic algorithm of the social media engine (trending publications, popular, most important) and by the users themselves (by subscribing to other pages, changing status, changing location).

The internal design algorithm can simply be predefined or controlled by artificial intelligence. In the AI case, the setting of the news feed for each user will be individualized based on his or her preferences. This also allows social media owners to exert some influence over their entire audience by focusing on specific news stories.

Groups and communities generate great content that allows people to find like-minded or necessary people. Users often have to reach out one-on-one. You need to give them the ability to communicate privately within the social media app without using third-party resources. Keeping users in your social media app like Facebook simply prevents them from being distracted by other services and evaluating their usefulness. This is very important when you plan to not only retain an audience but also monetize your social media app.

Search

For new users, the search function can be a staple when browsing their news feeds. The search engine allows newcomers to quickly find interesting people, communities, and groups and start generating new content.

Notifications

Until other technologies are invented to notify users of changes to their feed, apps notify them with sounds and push notifications on top of the main screen. This catches the user’s attention, makes them open the social media app, and forms a reflex to wait for their feed to be updated. Still, this feature should be customizable, allowing the user to decide when and what notifications to receive.

File sharing

Don’t limit yourself to text messaging only. Multimedia content attracts users’ attention. Multimedia makes up a large part of the news feed. But such content requires a careful approach to the design of storage and distribution systems. Having a server infrastructure and a CDN is a prerequisite for immediate access to heavy media content around the world.

When developing a social media app like Facebook, attention must be paid to the issue of content storage on the mobile device. It is necessary to find a reasonable compromise between unlimited data caching and the speed of downloading data from the server, referring to the limited resources of mobile devices.

Natural Language Processing

When you create a multilingual social media app like Facebook, you erase the boundaries between countries and people who speak different languages. This means that each user sees all content in the default language of their app. Of course, you must leave the option to disable this feature and select the language manually.

SoftUUP — reliable social media app developer

We told you how to develop an app like Facebook based on our experience. We can help you in developing social media app. Our advantages:

• – Quality assurance. The experience of our specialists is a guarantee of quality code, high speed of your social media application, and protection against hacking.
• – Strict adherence to deadlines. We competently estimate the time required for the high-quality implementation of the project and perform the work on time.
• – Maintenance. After the publication of the developed application, we will always be in touch with you and at any time are ready to consult you and help you in matters of further promotion, etc.

Get in touch to our custom mobile application development to develop your app