How to Create a Social Media App [Updated 2023]

Social media apps have taken up a great part of our lives and the application market already, and their number continues to grow. . As of January 2022, a global review states that 58.4% of the world's population uses social media for about 2.3 hours daily.

In this article we are going to tell you how to create a social media app, namely:

• Social media app types
• Trends and insights from the social media app market in 2023
• Best practices of social media app development and design
• Services involved in social media creation: BA, QA, PM
• How to make a social media app for iOS and Android
• Detailed cost breakdown for building a social media app

You should read the post in greater detail if you want to make a new successful network.

How to Make a Social Media App in 2023

Just imagine that over half of the world's population spends time on social media, making it 4.62 billion users.

Facebook is still the number one social media service with 2.910 billion monthly active users. Facebook is followed by YouTube with 2.562 billion, WhatsApp with 2.562 billion, and Instagram with 1.478 billion. WeChat, a Chinese multi-purpose social media platform, has 1.263 billion monthly active users.

Why do we stress these numbers? This is a reality. People like social networks and media-sharing networks, so there should be tools to cover these needs.

These numbers provide an opportunity to grow your own community, collect insights from the market, influence purchasing decisions, evaluate user engagement, and more. As well, this definitely makes it easier to find a new niche by analyzing target audience and conducting market analysis.

So, how to make a social media app in 2023?

For starters, here is a list of steps you should follow to make a great new social media app:

1. Define the target audience of potential users
2. Define the main goal of making a social media app
3. Investigate successful and competitive social products
4. Identify unique selling points for the future network
5. Describe features for social media app development
6. Find and hire a capable team of software developers
7. Finalize the product concept and technical specifications
8. Design, develop, and test an MDP (minimum delight product)
9. Promote your service and grow the user base
10. Check app performance and plan ongoing development

There are many entrepreneurs who should not miss the chance to be part of this prosperous market by building new social media platforms.

Types of Social Media Apps

Let’s first define what categories all social media apps are divided into, including consumer review networks, are divided into. This will help you to understand what niche you are going to enter and what big competitors will be waiting for you there.

Best Social Media Apps

These are the common types of social media to know about:

Social network apps

They are used to connect and interact with other people online. These social networking apps can be used for personal needs (Facebook, Twitter) or for professional communication (LinkedIn).

Media sharing networks

Such social apps allow users to share all kinds of media files (photos, videos, GIF files, etc.). The most famous representatives of this type are Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube, Vimeo, and Imgur.

Networks for consumer reviews

Such social media apps are used by customers to find and review businesses they’ve had experience with. Yelp is probably one of the most prominent apps among consumer review networks in this category.

Community and discussion forums

These platforms are great places for asking questions and receiving answers, sharing news, ideas, insights, and experience. The best social media apps in this category are Quora and Reddit, of course.

Bookmarking and content curation networks

Users of these apps can share their own content and discover the content of other users and save it. Such apps like Pinterest, Mix, and Flipboard belong to this type of social media.

Blogging and publishing platforms

These social media platforms allow users to create their own blogs and publish their content there. Tumblr and Medium are extremely popular now and thousands of people make their posts go live there every day.

Interest-based networks

This type of social networking unites people with common interests. Users can share their hobbies and related experiences on such platforms. Goodreads or Last.fm are nice examples to check out.

Anonymous social networks

This type of social networks is especially loved by teens because it lets them communicate anonymously with each other. Some of the most used apps of this category are Whisper, Ask.fm, and After School.

As you can see, there are many types of social media apps. You should pay attention to these categories because each of them defines the key features of the apps that belong there. Once you decide on your direction, make sure you have analyzed it properly and reviewed your potential competitors and target audience.

The next step to take is to review the latest social media trends to build your own social media app.

Current Social Media Trends

Social Media Trends

Every year people involved in the social media sector speak about the latest trends in social media. To some of us this topic seems to be threadbare but it is not in fact. Trends are important to watch out for and to follow in order to make your social media app up-to-date and viable.

Here are the social media trends to pay attention to if you want to create a social media app:

Augmented reality and face filters

Snapchat and Instagram are the trendsetters here. People still enjoy the funny face filters and it seems they will not go anywhere.

Artificial Intelligence and chatbots

These are not new social media trends as well. Having become popular in 2017, they still enjoy the demand.

Live streaming (live videos)

The most popular social media apps already have the feature of a video live streaming system. Users prefer watching live videos to reading posts on social media.

Video is growing

Video content is more popular than written posts because users prefer watching to reading now. It is explained by the lack of time they have and by the fact that visual information is easier to perceive. Discover more practical information here: How to Make a Video Chat App: Step by Step Guide with Business & Tech Aspects.

Ephemeral content

It is the type of content that is live for up to 24 hours and then disappears from your feed. Again, Snapchat and Instagram are the leaders here. Stories increased the time people spend on these social apps daily. A nice thing to attract users, isn’t it?

Cross-cultural content

Tools and services become available in the global arena and ‘cultural borders’ are blurred, social networks in particular. For instance, TikTok’s content-focused algorithm makes it possible to showcase videos created by users from the other side of the world rather than those that have been created locally.

Focus on Generation Z

Researchers say that Millennials are no longer the most influential audience. They will soon be pushed aside by a new Generation Z (people born after 1998). If you think about how to create a social media app now, make sure you analyzed the need of the new influential group - Gen Z.

Cybersecurity

Security of data is among the core factors of whether or not a user chooses a social media platform or social network. These days, digital literacy and online safety is important to end-users. Data leaks were listed in a few famous incidents of misuse of information without user consent. Thus, make a social media app that protects user data.

Once you have decided upon your niche and have learned the trends to follow to make a social media app, it is time to get down to app features, design, and development.

Off-topic: These days, software developed for the healthcare industry is on the rise as well. Feel free to check how to make a medical app from scratch as well.

Basic Social Media App Development: All You Should Know

Building a social network is no simple task. Your app idea has to go through all stages of app development to become a market-ready product. Let’s go into the details of each of them step by step.

Best Practices of Social Network Design

If you have analyzed the market well and have all necessary materials (a mind map, functional specification) to build your own social network then the first step you will take with your development team is UX/UI design.

If you want to know how to create a social media app that will look and feel nice and appealing, you should learn some basic requirements to your future product in terms of design. If to be correct these are pieces of advice based on some industry tendencies, designers’ experience, and related researches.

Nowadays, all social media apps should stick to the following simple rules:

Rules of Social Media Design

• Use the shades of blue as this color is not considered annoying
• Use the same navigation bar with search functions, notifications, and profile icon throughout the app on every screen where they are required
• The design of the entire application should be adapted to a specific platform (there are design guidelines for iOS and Android) for users to feel comfortable using the app on their device. At the same time your app design should have its key features in common on all platforms. It is necessary to ensure equal user experience and feel if a user changes iOS to Android or vice versa
• Smooth switch from a web app design to a mobile app design to make user experience similar on any device
• Round profile pictures help to focus on a user’s face and make it simpler to remember them or distinguish them from the list of others
• Infinite scroll of posts
• Design simplicity and focus on user content
• Possibility of self-expression in design (custom opportunities like changing a profile picture, cover image, or even profile colors)
• Simple search of users and relevant content
• Quick sign in or app entry without signing up on the first stages to give an opportunity for users to find out more about your product

All in all, the quality of your social network design will greatly depend on a designer who will do the work for you. Nevertheless, the above mentioned best practices will help you find the happy medium between what you will want your design to be and what it should be.

A good way to design the first (basic) version of your custom app (social media apps included) is to actually make designs for the full app version. It is necessary to look at your project globally, plan possible interactions, and set a correct app architecture. Once your development team sees the complete picture, it becomes clear to them how to create a social media app you request. They decide what features to leave for next versions and which of them can be implemented within the first app version.

Basic Features All Best Social Media Apps Should Have

In spite of the fact that all cases differ and every social media app should have at least one unique feature to stand out from its competitors, there is a basic set of functions any social network app cannot do without.

The suggested feature set, necessary to create a social media app in its basic version is as follows:

Social Media App: Basic Functionality

• Social authorization
• Feed
• Post creation
• Post likes
• Social notifications
• User profile
• Search
• Chat
• Push notification module
• Analytics
• Content management system (CMS): Admin authorization
• CMS: Admin management
• CMS: User management
• CMS: Reported user management

Let’s see what each of the features means:

These functions are the minimum of what needs to be built to make your product be a social media application.

In addition to designing and coding social media apps there are other services that usually participate in the process of app development: project management, social network app testing and QA. Do you think they are important within development process? Let’s find out.

Business Analysis, Project Management, Quality Assurance: Do You Need These Services?

App development companies usually provide a full range of services to have their clients’ needs fully covered. This eliminates the number of parties included in the process of app development and helps both clients and a software development company like MLSDev to work more closely and efficiently.

Though such a wide service range exists not in vain, some people think that coding is the only thing they need to make an app. In fact, it is not true. The services that might seem additional to some of the clients (e.g. project management, and quality assurance) are really important when it comes to real tasks.

You might need business evaluation, target audience analysis, and/or user engagement if you don’t know how to create a social media app and have only a rough project idea. In this case a business analyst will help you with all preparatory work that should be done before design and development itself. You will shape a project concept together, analyze competitors, work on the business and functional requirements of your project. The quality of this work and its deliverables (documents, functional specification, mind maps, sketches) are crucial for all other activities.

Key Components of Business Analysis

Project management is also a part you shouldn’t miss. Managing the workflow, team, tasks, and all kinds of communication take up a great deal of time. A project manager is a mediator between you as a client who wants to create a social media app and your development team who actually know how to make a social media app. If to think moneywise, you will save much more with a project manager rather than by doing this work yourself.

Components of Project Management

Development companies typically provide QA services not because they are not sure in the quality of their work but because they know that no technology or app can be 100% bug-free. Every product needs QA, especially if it is the first version of your new custom product. Requirements to newly created apps have changed and now users want to see decent quality even if you have just released your custom product to the market. If you want to create a social media app of a good quality it should be polished well.

Quality Assurance Process

Important Aspects of Social Network Development for Different Platforms

Before you come to actually building a social network lots of work needs to be done to prepare. Be sure that it is worth it. The more you are informed and the better all is set up before developers start working on your new social media app, the smoother will the custom software development process be.

It is time now find out all ins and out of making a social app for Android, iOS, and web platforms.

How to Make a Social Networking App for Android

How to Build a Social Media App for Android

In this section we will mostly speak about technologies and how the main features of a social media app can be implemented based on our expertise. Let’s first find out how to develop an app for Android.

General information on social media app development for Android:

• Architecture: MVVM (model–view–viewmodel) architectural pattern
• Programming language: Earlier we used only Java to develop apps for Android but now Kotlin is preferable for all new projects.
• Framework: The main framework used is Google Play Services. It allows for access to Google Services like Firebase, Cloud Messages, In-App purchases, Geolocation, etc.
• Library: RxJava2 mostly for composing asynchronous operations.

We use the following technology stack to work with the UI Layer:

• RecyclerView. It is a native Android component that is used to show scrollable content (a list) to a user and allows interactions with items on the list.
• Fragments. It is a native Android container that contains other views and widgets. Their main difference from view containers is that fragments have their own lifecycle.

Technical implementations for the Network layer are done with:

• Retrofit for network requests
• GSON for JSON parsing
• Glide for loading images and caching

• Code generation: Dagger framework for dependency injections.
• Analytics: Fabric platform for collecting crash reports and minimal data about app usage.
• Test frameworks: JUnit, Mockito, Robolectric

It is the technical basis for you to know if you want to understand how to create a social media app for Android.

Below is a table that shows in detail how to implement the basic features of a social app for Android:

How to Make a Social Media App for iOS

How to Build a Social Network for iOS

General information on social media app development for iOS:

• Architecture: MVVM (model–view–viewmodel) architectural pattern.
• Programming language: We use Swift to develop apps for iOS.
• Frameworks: Dip framework used as a service locator.
• Library: RxSwift

UI layer is built with the following technologies:

• DTTableViewManager/DTCollectionViewManager for building type-safe table views and collection views.
• LoadableViews for creating reusable view components.

Libraries used to build the Network layer:

• TRON/Alamofire for building network abstraction.
• Codable/SwiftyJSON for parsing JSON responses.
• AlamofireImage for loading and caching images from the network.

Automation and code-generation tools:

• Fastlane - deployment automation
• SwiftGen - resource code generation
• Sourcery - template code generation
• SwiftLint - for coding style guidelines enforcement

• Analytics: Fabric for collecting crash reports and minimal analytics
• Code generation: SwiftGen for generating the code to work with storyboards, images, colors, fonts, and localizable strings. Sourcery for generating the boiler-plate code.
• Guidelines: SwiftLint for enforcing coding guidelines.
• Tests: XCTest for unit tests. Nimble for asynchronous unit tests.

If you want to know how to create a social media app for iOS with the minimal feature set, look at the table below. It represents the technologies used to implement separate app functions:

Should You Create a Social Media Website?

How to Make a Social Media Website

All popular social media apps have web versions to reach out to as many users as possible. If the type of social media users who prefer to use websites is not your priority, then you can omit this step. If, on the contrary, you want to maximize your outreach efforts, you should build a social media website.

Below you will find the information on how to make a social media website from the technical point of view.

Front-end development:

• Programming language: We use JavaScript to make websites
• Framework: Angular 2+
• Unit tests: We use the Jasmine framework for unit testing of the self-written code

Back-end development:

• Programming language: Ruby
• Framework: Ruby on Rails
• Web Server: Nginx
• Application Server: Puma
• Deploy tool: Capistrano
• Databases: Postgres, Redis, ElasticSearch
• Tests: Rspec
• API Documentations: Swagger
• Analytics and monitoring: AppSignal, NewRelic
• Hosting: AWS
• Source code storage: GitLab

As you see, you will need to spend some extra time and effort to make a social media website but be sure it will definitely increase the number of your potential users.

How to Build a Social Media App Further?

Once you developed the first version of your custom social app for Android/iOS/web and tested its viability and marketability, it is time to move forward. You should constantly heighten users’ interest to your product by adding more features and improving it.

Scaling a Minimum Viable Product of a Social Media App

If you want your own network app to be among the best ones, you should work on it all the time. Below you will find out how.

Adding More Features to Your Basic Social Network App

Top social media apps never stop updating. They release new functions from time to time, make new designs, improve user experience, fix bugs, etc. You know it, you see it in your smartphones, you even wait for updates if they promise something really valuable for you.

Here are the additional features to add to your basic social media app first once you decide to grow your product:

Of course, it is not a limit for the feature set of your new social networking app. We have just given you a hint on how to create a social media app with the basic and important secondary functions that will make it a working product. The rest depends only on you, but if to be more exact, on your budget, deadlines, plans, wishes, etc.

How to Maintain a Social Media App

Simultaneously with the development of new features for your social media platform you should remember about the need to maintain and support the existing product. It doesn’t matter whether you are going to release new great features or redesign your app completely, your current version in production should be stable.

Support and maintenance of media sharing networks are in no way different from the support and maintenance of other applications. They can be done as a continuous process or as an on-demand service. All depends on the frequency and amount of tasks.

In general, support and maintenance at MLSDev presupposes:

• Working on additional features upon request
• More social network app testing and QA
• App stability control
• Control of server performance
• Scaling apps
• Product update (technologies, OS, servers, security)

It is not enough just to create a social media app, all listed activities should be part of the ongoing work on your product.

How Much Does It Cost to Build a Social Media App?

Now when you understand how to create a social media app and how to find an app developer, let’s speak about costs. Financial side matters, doesn’t it?

We will calculate three options for your convenience:

1. The first one is the price for the first app version with a basic feature set.
2. The second price is for a product with additional features and app development services.
3. The third amount is for a large project with complex features.

The following table will show you how much it costs to create a social media app of your choice:

Please note, that these social media app development cost calculations are rough. They should give you a general understanding of a budget you might need to make a social network. However, every case is special, so it is better to consult professionals about yours.

MLSDev Social Media App Experience

Though you already know how to create a social network from scratch in detail, it doesn’t mean that the process will be simple and quick. Famous social media apps like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter were not built in one go, so you should be patient and take smaller steps. It is a wise way to make a social media app and turn it into a successful product.

Our team has expertise in creating social network apps among which is Yummi project. This app is a platform that helps to track and share your eating adventures. It allows logging your personal food memories, share them with friends, and decide what new eating place to attend based on your friend's feedback. It began with Minimum Viable Product development on iOS. Later, the app was converted on Android with core features. These days, the project keeps evolving and adding new functionality like foodprints based on geolocation. You may check the Case study of Yummi project on our website and find there links to download the app on Google Play or App Store.

Yummi App

Frequently Asked Questions: