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Want to build a disruptive social network? Three ways to consider

It may not be possible to disrupt Facebook as a public social network but it’s fairly feasible to disrupt some of its features and engagement metrics.

We have come from nobody-can-be-Facebook to how-to-build-your-own-social network platform that would take away some audience from the giant public social network. Facebook has lost a lot of love in the last few years. On one hand, it continues to attract new users from new demographics and regions. On the other, some of its features have started to annoy its existing users who now feel they are ‘over-exposed’ on the platform.

As a result, startups and enterprises are more inclined than ever to build a social network in a niche demographic. And surprisingly enough, many of these social networks have been doing quite well. Quora is the ultimate platform for answering your deepest, most personal, professional, commercial, social or moral questions. And everyone has access to answers beyond ‘friend requests’. Medium and WhattPad are gradually becoming the social networks of writers and readers who like to read contemporary content.

When a certain need remains unfulfilled on a certain social network, a natural impulse is = I want to start my own social network. The question is not how to build a social media website but that how to lure existing Facebook or Snapchat users into believing that your own social network has utility for them. There’s enough scope for every business in a world of Netflix where ‘personalized’ experiences sell.

For this, it’s vital to consider three most important elements that would help you build a social media site that would draw engagement.

Three ways to build a disrupting social network

1. Personalization

If you just take notice of how Facebook has evolved over the years, you will realize that on top of its feed priorities is – personalization. When people got bored with sharing status updates, photographs and videos, Facebook added extra features on ‘About Me’ section with featured photos and options to add professional and personal details. When this was felt saturated, it came up with ‘Facebook memories’ feature so much so that now it gives you a recap of your monthly engagement with the network. Recently, it added various fun questions for the users to answer. Questions like – what annoys me the most, what’s my all-time favourite food etc. People loved answering these questions because they felt personal attention to their interests. Now Facebook is pushing the whole ‘community idea’ in a big way. You get personalized videos made out of your photographs with a touch of global community appeal.

Startups looking for building the next most engaging social network should plan ahead ideas of personalization. It’s not enough to hook users initially with great feed design or features, you have to constantly work through those features in order to make sense for the users. Understand that today’s user’s attention span is the least experienced by any other generation of users. As a result , they often feel bored doing the same things on social media.

2. Engagement

Along with ideas of personalization, the next important factor is executing some ideas of engagement. While the number of engaged users is important, what really determines your success is the amount of time these users spend on your social network. You don’t want millions of users who do nothing on your platform because it doesn’t benefit you in the long-term nor the businesses that are trying to get users’ attention on your social network platform. Different platforms follow different engagement metrics. These can be number of likes, comments, shares, the frequency of visits, time spent on each visit and so on. Another important way to measure engagement metrics is the 10th and 20th repeat visit.

This is a sure shot way to measure how much a user is engaged with your application. Analytics would help you understand what the user is doing on his/her repeat visit in order to get a feedback on which features are working for your application. Facebook had used the metrics of ‘7 friends in 10 days’ for all the new users in order to gauge whether or not they will engage with the application in future. Notifications and how they are delivered play a huge role in jerking people off of what they are doing and making them visit an application.

3. One key differentiator

Twitter’s key differentiator was the short status update known as Tweet whose character limit was later extended to 140 characters. This was unique and justified its USP – micro blogging platform. For Instagram, it was photos and less than a minute long videos. However, Instagram is now allowing videos as long as an hour through IGTV. Snapchat came up with the idea of vanishing content which was later adopted by WhatsApp and Instagram in their story features. Sometimes, a key differentiator may be a restriction. So you need to be careful about which feature would be a restriction and which feature would truly add value to your platform.

A lot of similar messengers have tried to do what WhatsApp is doing without a key differentiator. As a result, Telegram or Hike don’t enjoy as much recognition as WhatsApp. However, what’s noticeable here is Hike and Telegram both have considerable number of users – who may have been overwhelmed by the reach of WhatsApp or the amount of notifications it sends them on a daily basis.

Vinfotech has helped several businesses build winning social networks from scratch. We have a varied portfolio that shines with niche social networks that successfully engaged millions of users. If want to build your own social network, feel free to call us.

IN A NUTSHELL
  • Personalize news feeds, user engagement, user interests. Plan ahead
  • Engage user through user analytics in terms of time, frequency of engagement
  • Analyze features that lead to deeper user engagement
  • Always think of one key differentiator that would help you stand out and make users keep coming

About Vinfotech

Vinfotech creates world's best social networks for brands, interest groups and sports fans. We promise initial set of real engaged users to put turbo in your social network growth. Our award winning software vSocial™ allows us to build stellar customized communities faster and better. Our customers include Aston Martin, Burberry, Arabian Gulf League and Snapdeal.

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