How to Develop a Social Media Application

Social media has become a second global home after the earth where human presence is vastly increasing every day. As per December 2019, the population around the globe is nearly 7.8 billion, out of which the community of social users is 4.52 billion.

Moreover, among these internet users, 3.725 are social media users who spend about 142 minutes a day.

This brings a huge demand for applications that can compete with the existing social applications and serve something new to stand out from the crowd.

Moreover, you would be wondering how you can develop your social application. Today, we will give you maximum possible knowledge about developing a social application that can serve the customers well and meet their expectations.

Let us start the app development process!

What are the Benefits of Social Media Application?

Ahead of the development phase, you must know why the social media application is so vital in today's era.

Broad Audience: As a marketer or business owner, you would love to reach a vast audience that can only be possible through a social application. According to a research, 73% of US people watch YouTube.

Direct Connection with Audience: Social media has today become one of the most remarkable marketing strategies that offers a single platform to connect with your audience directly.

Unique Throwback Features: Social media is the only platform where users can share their memories and keep them protected for years to come. With time, the memories are recalled to your social wall, connecting your past, present, and future altogether.

Better Connectivity with Known: The Internet has made it possible to connect with anyone you know who is physically no more in contact with you. Social media is the one-stop destination to stay connected with your friends, family who are far from your geographic location.

What Crucial Features your Social Media App must Include?

To beat the competition and thrive with flying colours, your social application must serve something unique to stand out in the game with other social apps that are currently available in the market. Yet, some core features must be included in your app. Below are the core features that your social application must encompass:

Notification & Feed: Real-time updates are a vital asset in every social media application. Your app must serve real-time notifications and feeds to the user, only to keep them updated with the latest changes on their profile, friend's updates, etc. Alongside notifications, the user must also be given engagement tools that include Like, Share, Comment, Dislike, etc. that builds user-trust on your app and boosts their engagement level.

Easy Customization in Profile & Settings: Every user loves to manage their social profile the way they like. So, your social application must include profile editing options that allow the users to set up their customized profile, including a profile picture, personal data, username, display name, to name a few.

Privacy & Security: Above all, you should develop a highly secure application and bind user privacy to limited usage. Privacy and security are two major concerns that every app user prefers looking into, ahead of using any new app.

Once you maintain the protection of user data, you can build trust and ensure a long-term relationship with market branding.

Integration with Other Social Platforms: To make your social app goes popular, it must feature social media integration. This way, you can help the user to connect with other social platforms through your app and populate your app across different social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, and many others.

Programming Languages Required for Social App Development

Front-end development:

· Programming language: JavaScript is more preferred over other languages

· Framework: Angular 6

· Unit tests: Jasmine Framework

Back-end development:

· Programming Language: Ruby

· Framework: Ruby on Rails

· Application Server: Puma

· Web Server: Nginx

· Deployment Tool: Capistrano

· Databases: Postgres, Redis, ElasticSearch

· API Documentation: Swagger

· Tests: Rspec

· Analytics and Monitoring: AppSignal, NewRelic

· Hosting: AWS

· Source Code Storage: GitLab

How to Build a Social media App?

Like conventional app development, the social media application development also includes some necessary steps that ensure a practical and workable social app.

Step 1: Make a Strategy: Without any idea, you won't be able to build a strategy to gather the audience and serve the usefulness of social media application. Therefore, prior to the implementation stage, you should run a thorough research and make a complete app development strategy. Alongside research, you should consider some existing social media applications that can give you a better idea about the scope of use and competition of your app. Enlist the features and loopholes that you find in the existing apps. Furthermore, plan to include them to your social media application.

Build the MVP (Minimum Viable Product): To create a user-interaction application, building an MVP is a perfect option. Minimum Viable Product (MVP) showcases the list of features added to the social application that will give a glimpse of what the app will look like. MVP is also beneficial to generate leads and track user feedback.

E.g., Buffer is a social scheduling application that started as an MVP. Initially, it only offered Twitter scheduling. Based on the users' feedback and proper response, other social scheduling options were added alongside functional tweaks.

Design Your Social Application: Once you are done with the MVP and have enough user-data, you are all set to start the development phase. Earlier, we have already mentioned the core features that a social media application must include. Ensure that you develop the entire application in small modules that will help you bind them together in the final stage.

Release Application on Play Store & iTunes: Submission of your social application on Google Play Store and iTunes is the next step to popularize your app. Both the app stores have their respective guidelines that must be fulfilled ahead of app submission.

With time, your social media application will require maintenance and tweaks with updated technology. This way, you can add new features and ensure that your social app has better competence with the existing applications in the market.

Once your social app is available for download, it is time to hand over the task to the marketing team for app promotion and increase the app installs.