Social Media Application Development: Current Market Size
There are a few things that make social media stand out among other digital products: communication and content sharing. In fact, social media remains one of the most promising niches. Speaking of numbers, the global social media app market size reached $221.29 billion in 2022 compared to $159.68 billion in 2021. In the meantime, Facebook remains a top-using social media app with roughly 2.6 billion users worldwide, reports Statista.
In this article, we’re taking a look at social media application development process lifecycle. We’re uncovering the development stages, cost, and suggesting the tech stack needed for building a social media app.
Stages of Social Media App Development
Let’s delve into the essential workflow of social media app development.
Step 1: Define the Target Audience and Purpose
Just having an idea of a social media app is not enough to get started. Social media app development is a competitive battlefield, with some householding names like Snapchat and Instagram already taking the lead. Understand what problems your target audience still has, what features your competitors lack, and establish key success metrics. All these ideas will help define a unique niche for your social media application.
Step 2: Decide on Monetization Strategy
There are different ways how your application will generate profits: in-app purchases, freemium, advertisements, and venture capital. Pick the most appropriate option based on the purpose of your app and target audience’s needs.
Step 3: Decide on the Features and Functions
At the ideation stage, it’s easy to get lost in the plethora of functions and features you’d like to implement. Understand your financial capacities and skills of a development team to map out must-have features at the beginning. In general, typically social media app should include features like profile creation/login, likes, newsfeed, chatting, content personalization, content sharing, push notifications, and comments.
Step 4: Design
The design stage is a complex one and consists of several steps namely scratching, wireframing, and prototyping, The point is to visualize the skeleton features, understand how the application works, and elaborate UX/UI to come up with the best solution,
Step 5: Create MVP
MVP is a minimum viable product. To put it simply, MVP is a version with basic yet sufficient features to validate the business idea, verify the monetization strategy, verify the UI/UX and continue development based on feedback gathered and overall app performance. In addition, the MVP of a social media app is a great tool for attracting investors and early adopters.
Step 6: Publish & Market
Social media app development is not about the involvement of a tech team but also about huge marketing effort. As the development team releases a final version of a social media app, marketers come up with ways how they can build and grow your community. They handle promotions, video guides, and effective descriptions of a product – all to attract loyal users to your social media app.
Step 7: Analyze, Maintain, and Support
As marketers do their magic, the development team stays on alert for tracking app’s performance. They eliminate bugs, provide all kinds of technical support and update the social media app to retain user engagement.
Technologies for Social Media App Building
The exact list of tools and technologies needed for social media app development depends on the specifications of the project, the budget available, and platforms you want to release it on. General requirements would be as follows:
- Swift, Node.js, Flutter, and React Native, and Kotlin as programming languages;
- Google Maps as geolocation tool;
- FCM for push notifications;
- Alamofire for networking;
- Express 4 as framework;
- Twilio, PubNub for chat.
Social Media Application Building: Cost Estimations
The cost of social media app development depends on multiple factors like the desired functionality, the development team’s rates, the platform you develop for (iOS, Android or both) the type of building (open source, CMS, SAAS, or custom development from scratch). Speaking of custom development of social media app, the approximate cost is $95.000-$150.000.
Social Media App Development Company Voypost
If the idea of social media app development sparks you, Voypost is the only development team you should be opting for. Voypost is founded by Nikita Sviridenko – IT solution architect with 12-year experience in the field. The key components of Voypost’s projects are solid technical background and tight contact with clients throughout the development process. Don’t hesitate to contact us to receive an expert opinion on your personal case.
