How To Create a Social Media App and How much does it costs?
By: Sara Khan
Tags: Startup, Social Media, Programming, Mobile App Development, Technology

Saying that most people spend their favourite time on social media platforms would not be an exaggeration, especially in today’s world.

Over the time social media applications like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Twitter and more have become an integral part of people’s lives and daily routines. People have become so addicted to it, that the first thing they are dying to do after waking up is to check their social media feeds.

With billions of registered accounts and trillions of annual active users, social media apps have emerged as the bright opportunity for businesses to stay connected with their targeted audience.

Today, where the covid-19 pandemic has pushed businesses to doom and people are in isolation, traditional old-fashioned yet in-person communication has become almost impossible. And that’s where social networks and social media applications outshined as the most potential platform for emerging entrepreneurs to generate better business opportunities.

If you also belong to one of them, then you are at the right place. Here we are going to answer all of your burning questions and walk you through every step you need to take to make it happen.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Market Statistics: The Growing Social Media App Landscape

Why Do Businesses Should Invest in Social Media Apps?

What Type of Social Media App You Should Develop and Its Cost?

Tech Stacks That You Can Use To Develop A Social Media App

Current Trends That You Can Integrate Into Your Social Media App

Must-Have Feature To Consider When You Create a Social media App

Step-By-Step Guide To Create a Social Media App

How Much Does It Cost To Create a Social Media App?

How To Make Money From a Social Media App?

So before you get straight into the process of hiring the best mobile app development company, it is worth getting deep into each point and understand these parameters closely…

Market Statistics: The Growing Social Media App Landscape

Since developing an app is like starting another business that requires the same level of effort and budget. So before making something groundbreaking, it is worth evaluating the market and analyzing the leaders.

Here are a few statistics reflecting the growing landscape of social media apps:

According to the studies, the landscape of social network and social media applications is swiftly expanding and it has been observed that social media users have grown by 10% over the last year in 2020 and taking the global total to 3.96 billion in the first quarters of 2020.

On average, users are spending 2 hours and 33 minutes socializing online mostly on Facebook, YouTube, Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter or Snapchat in 2020.

According to the eMarket survey report, 11.8 million US user growth for the app in the next four years and expected to reach 138.1 million users will access Facebook Messenger in the US alone by 2022.

In the nutshell, it is fair enough to say that for the first time, more than half of the world’s population now uses social media with 99% of total social media users accessing these platforms via smartphones at some point.

And this provides the huge opportunity to grow your community and monetize your targeted audience with your own unique social media applications. While it’s true that social media apps are a great platform for communication and staying connected. But how can it benefit your businesses?

Why Do Businesses Should Invest in Social Media Apps?

Initially, social networking services are started with the aim to create a platform that helps users find each other and communicate online. But today, social media apps are not left just a medium of communication between friends and relatives. Let’s understand the relevance of social media apps with new era businesses.

Here are the few benefits that emerging bootstrappers can leverage with social media app development:

Easier To Reach Your Targeted Audience!

100% enables you to reach your targeted audience as you can use multiple search filters with the choice of location, gender, age, category, interest and more while posting any content on the app.

Build a Direct and Deeper Relationship With Community!

Customised social media apps can help in creating direct yet deeper relationships and interactions with users. Unlike traditional marketing campaigns, App owners can directly interact with the community and are able to make alterations in their services or products as per the user’s needs.

Get Access To Full Data And Keep Users Engaged With Your Content!

Get a deeper understanding of your community as existing social media platforms only give access to a fraction of your communities’ data. But when you are the owner of your own app, you will have the power to access full data and understand the interest areas of the people and what kind of social activity they like the most in your app which is a great lead for your business.

Bring Better Monetization Opportunities!

Social Media apps can make better profits by providing the opportunity to build digital marketplace options right under your app.

Say Goodbye to Clever Algorithms!

When promoting services on your own app, you don’t need to chase those tricky algorithms to navigate or news feed spaces to fight for. It’s simply you and your audience. All you need is to hire an app developer to create a full-featured app. But when you promote it on existing social media platforms, there are thousands of people, creators and businesses to compete with and algorithms would decide which content to show and to who.

Stay Connected With the Users 24/7!

A Social media app development builds a channel for your business to promote a certain product, brand or services and stay in touch with the users 24/7.

Create a Private Community of Users!

It’s a unique yet leading opportunity to get brand enthusiasts together at your app and form a circle with like-minded people.

In the nutshell: By creating your own social network, you will free yourself from all such hassles and grab the attention of the users of your products and services. By hiring a software developer you can easily create a social media app that can add an edge to your business. But the central question is, what type of app should you build for your business?

Let’s answer this question in the next section!

What Type of Social Media App You Should Develop and Its Cost?

Before you head straight into the app development process, let’s first understand what are the major categories that all social media apps are divided into. This will help you decide which app type will better suit your business goals and bridge the gap between your success.

Here are the common types of social media app that you need to know about:

Media Sharing Networks: This is a type of app or a platform that allows users to share all types of media files including photos, videos, GIF files and more. The perfect examples to consider are Vimeo, YouTube, Snapchat, or Instagram. An average cost of app development can be $15,000 to $25,000+, depending upon the features and functionalities of the app.

Social network Apps: Applications like Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin are the perfect examples of personal and professional social networking apps. And with millions of monthly active users of Facebook are strongly influencing business to hire mobile app developer to build this type of application. The estimated cost of app development can be starting from $20k+ and go to any expensive price.

Networks for Consumer Reviews: Such types of applications are used for customers to verify reviews and ratings of the businesses they’ve had experience with. And Yelp is one of the most prominent examples of this category. The average price of creating this type of app can be starting from $15,000 to $18,000+.

Community and Discussion Forums: This can be a great platform where like-minded people come to the same platform for asking questions, receiving answers, sharing news, ideas, insights and experiences. Quora and Reddit are the titans in this category of social media apps. The starting price to build this type of app can be ranging from $15000 to $20,000+.

Blogging and Publishing Platform: Applications like Medium can be a perfect example of this type of social media app that allows users to create their blogs and publish their content and update them about any technology, services, products or anything every day. The average budget you need to build for this app can’t be starting from $12,000 to $15,000+.

As you notice, there are many types of social media applications available to choose from. And there are various applications that are leading in their domain. So no matter what type of app category you choose to develop, it is important that you hire the best app development company that can translate your app idea into a robust, scalable and flexible digital solution under your limited budget.

Tech Stacks That You Can Choose For Cross-Platform Social Media App Development(iOS/ Android)

If you are interested in creating a social media application that runs on multiple platforms but behaves like native apps, then here are the few tech stacks including Flutter, React Native, and more that you can use to build a cross-platform application

Since we are aiming to build a social media app with React Native, so are here some tools that you can use to build a full-featured social media app.

Since React Native is one of the top choices of the framework, though most IT companies are inclining towards React Native for mobile app development solutions. RN is not only easy to fit the budget but also empower developers with a choice of features that make the development process 10x faster and cut down the impactful amount on the budget.

Now the question is, what kind of modern trends can you integrate into the social media application while developing with React Native?

Current Trends That You Can Integrate Into Your Social Media App

With each passing year, the Social Media platform brings the latest trends to keep their users engaged and addicted to their applications. For some of us, this topic seems to be threadbare, but it is not in fact because developing an application with old tired and boring functionalities will only bring failure.

So here are the few trends to watch out for before you hire a cross-platform app developer for building an outstanding social media application:

Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots

AI and chatbots are playing a major role when it comes to delivering excellent customer supper on social media apps. Businesses running over social media can use AI-powered chatbots to answer the queries of their customers in no time. AI-integrated chatbots can efficiently conduct conversations with the consumers and provide them with the solution right away by understanding their query.

AR Powered Face Filters

Like Snapchat and Instagram, you can also be a trendsetter in the field of social media apps. People still enjoy the funny filters and visit the app frequently to check new updates every day.

Live Video Streaming

This could be the most engaging and attractive feature of your social media app as users love watching live videos or reading comments below on social media.

Uploading Video Content

In comparison to Images, video content is most popular to attract the attention of the users and keep them stay on your post for longer. But since everyone has a fast-paced life, keep it simple, short, and engaging to make your users come back to your post regularly.

24 Hours Story Post

It is a type of trend that allows you to post a story that stays live for 24 hours on your feed like Instagram and after that, it will disappear. People widely use this feature to keep their friends updated with their everyday life activities.

Sharing and Publishing Content On Social Media

While more and more people want to share their content with as many users as possible. Though it’s good to provide your users a platform whether they can publish the content and expand the user base.

Once you have decided upon your niche and learned trends to follow to make a social media app, it’s time to hire cross-platform app developer and check out the rough estimation of time and cost it will take for your project.

As of now, you know the trends that you can integrate to make your social media app working smoothly. But what are the basic features that should have in your app in case you are going with MVP?

So here, we have jotted down the list of must-have features along with the estimated development cost for iOS and Android.

Must-Have Feature For When You Create a Social media App

Building a social media app is no simple task. So to make your app function, you may be wondering what features you should consider for an internet-based network?

So here’s an infographic list of features along with the estimated development cost and time that it will take to develop. To make it develop, all you need is to hire an app developer experienced in customizing social media apps with detailed features.

Note: These are the rough estimations mentioned here by simply evaluating the market survey reports. The real estimations can vary according to the needs of the businesses and the type of application you are interested in building.

How To Build a Social Media App in 2021?

While building a social media app is a complex task that requires pro skills to code this app idea. So it is worth that the coding job will be left with the expert app development company and you’ll focus on aspects of building an app for iOS and Android. To make sure that reading this section will actually be worth it, therefore we are keeping things simple and help you assist in setting all the things before the developers get their hands on the project.

Now is the time to find out all the ins and outs of making a social app for Android and iOS:

Phase 1: General Information on Social Media App Development For Android/iOS

Architecture: MVVM (Model-View-viewmodel) architecture pattern.

MVVM (Model-View-viewmodel) architecture pattern. Programming Language: Earlier we used only Java to develop Android native but now developers are using Kotlin for new projects. For iOS Native apps, you can use Swift or Object C++. But to make it work on the web, Android and iOS with the same programming language, you can choose React Native for the app development.

Earlier we used only Java to develop Android native but now developers are using Kotlin for new projects. For iOS Native apps, you can use Swift or Object C++. But to make it work on the web, Android and iOS with the same programming language, you can choose React Native for the app development. Framework: In the case of Android, Google Play Services are mainly used as a Framework as it provides the access to a wide choice of Google Services including in-app purchase, Geolocation, Cloud Messages, Firebase and more. For iOS, Dip Framework is used as a service locator.

In the case of Android, Google Play Services are mainly used as a Framework as it provides the access to a wide choice of Google Services including in-app purchase, Geolocation, Cloud Messages, Firebase and more. For iOS, Dip Framework is used as a service locator. Library: RxJava2 and RxSwift for Android and iOS respectively.

Phase 2: Technology Stacks to Be Used on UI layer of the App

RecyclerView: It is a native Android component that is used to show scrollable content in the form of a list to a user and allow interactions with items on the list. Whereas, DTTableViewManager/DTCollectionViewManager are used for building type-safe table views and collection views in iOS apps.

It is a native Android component that is used to show scrollable content in the form of a list to a user and allow interactions with items on the list. Whereas, DTTableViewManager/DTCollectionViewManager are used for building type-safe table views and collection views in iOS apps. Fragments: It’s a native Android container that contains other views and widgets and they have their own lifecycle. And in iOS, LoadableViews are used for creating reusable view components.

Phase 3: Technical Implementations are Required For the Network Layer

For Android Native Apps

Retrofit for network requests

GSON for JSON parsing

Glide for loading images and caching

For iOS Native Apps:

TRON/Alamofire for building network abstraction.

Codable/SwiftyJSON for parsing JSON responses.

AlamofireImage for loading and caching images from the network.

How Much Does It Cost To Create a Social Media App?

Now when you understand the important technical things that are required for social media app development, let’s speak about the cost. No matter whether you are a startup or an entrepreneur, the financial side always matters to you!

So, we will provide you with the calculation of three app versions to help you decide which app version will best suit your business needs and budget:

1: Basic Version, is the best option for the first app version that can be launched with the basic functions and feature set.

2: Full Product with advanced features and additional functionals that make your app fit the growing needs of the market.

3: Modern Large App with complex structure and features to add a competitive edge to your product.

Note: Before you hire a mobile app development company, it is vital to understand that these price estimates are based on market surveys. It can differ from company to company and developer to developer.

But the main question still remains unanswered: how will you make money from the app?

How To Monetize Your Social Media App in 2021?

If you are wondering that how can you monetize your social media app and make a good profit from your investment, then here are the few strategies that you can try to achieve this:

Paid Subscriptions: As long as your content serves the real value to the community, members will be happy to pay for a subscription. You can offer a free tier with good content and for in-depth and high valued content, you can offer a paid tier. In addition, Apple and Google Payment systems make subscribing easier and simpler.

As long as your content serves the real value to the community, members will be happy to pay for a subscription. You can offer a free tier with good content and for in-depth and high valued content, you can offer a paid tier. In addition, Apple and Google Payment systems make subscribing easier and simpler. Physical Purchase: From innovative face filters to cool merchandise with snappy slogans, you can sell direct stock to the users. So it can be a great way to use this platform to earn money.

From innovative face filters to cool merchandise with snappy slogans, you can sell direct stock to the users. So it can be a great way to use this platform to earn money. Sponsored Content: If your app is leveraging great community members, then you can provide opportunities to other businesses to reach them out with the paid sponsorship program.

If your app is leveraging great community members, then you can provide opportunities to other businesses to reach them out with the paid sponsorship program. Events and Activities: Promote events and online experience through your community platform with the paid ticketing and start earning the money.

Let’s sum up this blog!

Conclusion

So here we are ending this blog! Still, if you are sitting and thinking that it will take a hefty budget and ages to complete the project, then we recommend you to hire a mobile app development company that always comes up with the best alternatives. Still, we have covered everything you need to know about building a social media app right from the scratch- the technicalities, features, functionalities, costing, monetizing strategies and more. We try to help you get started with the digital connection with no strings attached anywhere.

If you have any doubt anywhere, then you can drop a query in the comment box! Experts will answer it with their expert advice.

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