Skræddersyet udvikling af sociale medier

Seas and oceans separate people on our planet, but social networks unite them. Meta alone claims that 3.59 billion people in the world use its products. These are well-known Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. If you add to this number of users of other social networks, we can say that more than 70% of the world's population is united in sustainable online communities. Only kids and representatives of separate tribes probably did not get into this exciting whirlpool.

Statistics report that the user spends 2 hours and 40 minutes a day on social networks and has nine accounts there. It is impossible to pass by these interesting facts because users benefit from social networks. Depending on the type of social network, it can be just entertainment, solving material, or psychological needs.

And of course, in addition to individual users, business actively uses social networks for promotion. And social networks themselves have long become a high-yield business. For example, the value of Meta in the market exceeds the value of the two largest banks - JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America. And this growth has not stopped for the second decade. Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg himself wouldn't believe it in 2004.

We have to admit that such a highly profitable business has attracted the attention of many startups and investors. Of course, competition is great, but does this mean there is no room for new projects? We should recognize that humanity has lost creativity if that were the case. Fortunately, there are still a lot of talented entrepreneurs not to break the process of creating new social networks from continuing.

Perhaps you also feel the strength to challenge technology giants and create your social network. Then we recommend that you carefully study the intricacies of the process to avoid gross mistakes.

Let's be frank from the very beginning. Creating your social network, which can be a profitable business, is not a cheap task. And it's not only about the cost of development but also the cost of its promotion. Let's remember the recent rise of the Clubhouse web application. It was created in 2019 by Paul Davison and Rohan Seth as an application for Talkshow podcasts. However, in May 2020, they received $12 million from investors, and in 2021 they became a unicorn! Given Paul Davison's track record in Silicon Valley, you can be sure that he had not put this money in his pockets. Judging by the names of the attracted influencers at the first stage of the application launch, Andreessen Horowitz invested wisely to form the application's audience.

First of all, you need to figure out what a social network is. Wikipedia will undoubtedly inform you: "A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors.» And we will add that a social network can be considered any website where users interact with each other. It is the main difference from ordinary websites, where users interact mainly with the website's content.

The second topical question is, "Is it possible to make money on your social network"? Of course, it is possible. Otherwise, it cannot explain the massive influx of investors into this area. Specific ways, of course, depend on the social network model. But generally, there are two strategies: selling user data to advertisers and premium services.

It is possible to use users' data for monetizing if the social network's audience is large enough to identify its interest groups. In the case of Facebook, this works perfectly, as the company has collected a massive amount of information about its users' location, demographics, interests, and habits. Advertisers on their own can select the groups of users they are interested in. Then Facebook intelligent algorithms include relevant ads in our newsfeed, rotate them, and ensure not to overload us with them.

Another example of selling data is Twitter's policy. Without such detailed information about their users as Facebook, they found a brilliant way to monetize their service securely. Twitter offers to purchase an API to access all published messages. Since all twits on this social network are public, it is impossible to violate privacy. In addition, Twitter disclaims the obligation to systematize data for the API, leaving the client the right to look for interested consumers himself.

Ironically, it is not only social networks that benefit from this model. Users have the opportunity to use first-class communication services free of charge, for which otherwise they would have to pay a subscription fee. Here we approached the description of the second monetization model - premium services.

If the sale of user data is impossible or undesirable, social media offer users additional paid services. Everyone has got used to the Internet as an open space, and now it isn't easy to find a resource that charges registration and access to essential functions. It has also become customary that some special features aren't free.

The best example of popular paid services is premium features implemented on dating sites like Tinder. Usually, it is an opportunity to highlight the questionnaire in a particular way, more frequent issuance in search, disabling advertising messages. Such premium subscriptions are typically inexpensive and therefore in good demand. LinkedIn uses a similar model, but due to the relatively narrow specialization of the social network, the price of such services reaches $120.

In a sense, the monetization model adopted by the YouTube streaming service is unique. It sells advertisers the opportunity to place contextual video and text advertising. But if a user wants to exclude watching ads, he may purchase a premium subscription. Thus, every visitor certainly contributes to the platform's further development.

What types of social networks exist, and what are they for? In addition to the main known types, new social networks are constantly emerging that experiment with ways to interact with their users. Therefore, such a list will never be complete.

Historically, Facebook has become the first universal social network. The initial focus on groups of students quickly expanded to an indefinite number of users. Users themselves form social groups based on personal preferences. The possibilities of content sharing are extensive, but due to the versatility of the user interface, the presentation of content is imperfect. The same is about Twitter. When the task of artificially narrowing the audience's interests is faced, more specialized networks come to the fore.

With the development of mobile devices, social networks for the exchange of multimedia content have gained incredible popularity. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat are the most famous representatives of this type for easy manipulation with videos and photos. However, most users only look for easy-to-consume content and don't create it.

Dating services are an old and popular niche of social networks. Dozens of competitors segment the Tinder audience by offering services to increasingly narrow audiences of users. You can be sure that these services will not lose their attractiveness in the coming years because the problem of loneliness is still vital. By the way, LinkedIn also operates like a dating site, but for professionals.

Social networks for Reddit and Quora discussions are not focused on multimedia content. On these platforms, people are mainly looking for answers to their questions. The popularity of these social networks is growing because users can find there a more authoritative answer than in the Google search engine.

Bookmark applications such as Pinterest allow you to save images and texts to your board or album. The service seems static but at the same time enables users to carefully study the content of interest and return to it at any time. This idea significantly distinguishes it from the principles of universal social networks, where content has a relatively short life.

Marketplaces, if you didn't know, are also social networks. Their peculiarity is that content is mutual obligations to supply goods and pay for them. Smart contracts ensure the security of transactions without prejudice to the rights of participants. In this niche, in addition to giant trading platforms, there are thousands of regional and local social networks operating in B2C and B2B segments.

Academic social networks for exchanging scientific results are not so well known. Most likely, this is due to the complexity of monetizing such services. Science moves forward by an open community, so scientists are highly negative about restricting access to exclusive content.

Here are the critical functions for all social networks to implement unconditionally:

• The registration form is the first page that users see in the application. It should be short and straightforward, and the user should easily understand what is expected of him. As you remember, on average, the user is registered on nine social networks. Therefore, you can offer to use information about a user's account on Facebook, Google, or Apple in most cases. An alternative way can be a phone number or an email address.
• After registration, the user will go to customize their profile. The profile allows the user to identify himself; it contains some mandatory and optional fields. Usually, the user should specify a name, phone number, language of the interface, and content preferences. Optional fields may include photos, social status, address of residence, and others. There is no need to require redundant user information. First of all, it may simply not be necessary for a social network. Secondly, unnecessary questions about personality can become a big irritant for the user.
• Messaging between users is perhaps the most underrated feature. The task of any social network is to keep the user as long as possible. Therefore, do not let users switch to third-party messengers to exchange text, video, voice messages, and photos. Sometimes, a separate application provides messenger functions, which can help users to focus on some people in their environment.
• The news feed is a showcase of any social network. The success of a startup largely depends on the adaptation of the feed to the needs of each user. Today, the formation of the news feed is entrusted to intelligent algorithms, so you need to consider intellectual capabilities when choosing a platform for creating a social network.
• Content creation is the central function of social media, without which they cannot exist. Active users themselves are content generators, but if possible, you should invite them to use the content they have created on other social networks. The content filling process will accelerate if you synchronize your solution with Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.
• A powerful search on a social network is not a wish but a vital necessity. In the growth process, the social network accumulates big data, and it becomes a problem to find something specific in this virtual library. If the search is slow or inaccurate, this library may become an unnecessary burden in a social network infrastructure that does not benefit anyone.
• With the help of push notifications, you can increase the level of engagement and return users to the application. However, pushes about new messages, comments, and recommendations should not be intrusive. To do this, you need to provide for the selection of events for notification in the profile.

Now that you understand how complex modern social networks are, you can turn to how to create this complex mechanism of user network interaction properly. A lot of information on initiating a social network circulates on the Internet. If you summarize, you can identify three ways.

The fastest and cheapest is to use one of the many inexpensive SaaS platforms. This path is ideal for gaining initial experience in creating a low-value community, such as a school network or a book club. Such a project has no prospect of growing into business but will help to understand better what to aspire to.

Some people consider using open-source web engines with installed add-ons for social functions as another way to create a social network. I must say that such an idea has no prospects. To do this, it is enough to find out what page opening delays occur on ordinary websites using such web engines. But the social network is different from a regular website. The number of database requests and traffic many times exceeds the capabilities of web engines, so the social network can remind users of times when the only way to connect to the Internet was dial-up modems. It is unlikely that such a downgrade will appeal to modern users, and they will stay on this social network for a long time. Another problem is the low security of such projects. Such a social network website is highly likely to be a victim of hackers and the object of close attention from regulators.

The only correct solution for creating a fully-functional social network is custom development. But you need to pay attention to the platform used by the developer. For example, if it is a modified open-source web engine, it is better to refuse such services immediately.

Creating a high-performance platform requires a lot of time and financial costs. If the volume of investment in the project is several million dollars, you can go this way. Otherwise, you can find another, no less effective option.

The best way is to use the QSNE (Qwerty Social Network Engine) platform from X Networks. This platform is a framework, social media deployment tools, and ready-made infrastructure for high-load projects. It should be said at once that QSNE is not a constructor for the self-assembly of a finished project but a set of solutions based on which the company's engineers create high-load social networks, web portals, marketplaces. The solutions themselves are designed based on the company's modern technologies stack.

Thus the customer gets the opportunity to use technologies used by well-known social networks. In addition, the platform has all the tools to deploy a large-scale social network that is not inferior to industry leaders. Let's list the main features of the QSNE platform:

• Built-in support for 40+ world languages and correction tools for translators, automatic user language detection with the possibility of subsequent customization, translations of publications and user comments, as well as other content, into readers languages;
• The built-in billing system can operate more than a hundred different currencies, virtual and national, cross-rates calculation, taking into account exchange processing centers and the rates of various central banks, provides the functionality of the payment system;
• X Networks File Cloud can store and configure file access for users. It provides capabilities similar to Google Drive and exchange files attach files to publications or other objects. This ability is critical because social networks and complex portals are content generators;
• Billing and payment control systems integrated with notification services;
• Artificial intelligence Qwerty AI (flexible capabilities, technical user support, intelligent ranking of publications);
• News aggregation from authoritative sources (for each project, we define a list of "authorities");
• Possibilities of a marketplace, automation of sales and logistics, as well as internal transaction arbitration - we can develop your project into an analog of AliExpress;
• Smart contracts, «safe transactions, » internal arbitration service;
• A robust internal mail server provides sending messages and mailing automation that checks the correctness of addresses as well as overflowing mailboxes;
• Protection systems against DDOS and other types of attacks with automatic notification of providers (by the way, X Networks owns the testddos.com service for testing websites' load resistance);
• Modules for interacting with SMS and phone services;
• Protecting accounts from hacking, logging permissions, and two-factor authentication. The QSNE security system is one of the critical blocks of the platform;
• The ability to manage subscriptions to users and communities;
• Aggressive data caching (similar to Facebook);
• Flexible privacy settings for users and their publications;
• Powerful multi-threaded search engine;
• Creation of communities (open and closed pages, as well as professional and "by subscription");
• Internal messenger (instant messaging system), integrated with QAIM, with the capabilities of artificial intelligence;
• The antivirus scan of published content (SDK over 20 antiviruses), intelligent pre-moderation;
• End-to-end tagging of any content and data in the flow of information;
• Shortening link service system;
• Protection against bots and parsing (verification of user actions);
• SMM tools;

The advantage of using QSNE is that the customer receives the finished project at his entire disposal within a certain period for a fixed price. Risks of delay in the development and overspending of the budget are excluded.

Is it possible to deploy such a social network on the customer's infrastructure? Although the QSNE platform itself remains the developer's property, the ready social network belongs to the customer. Therefore, any suitable infrastructure suits for deploying a social network. X Networks engineers can prepare and configure the proper infrastructure for the customer and train specialists to maintain it.

Despite the unique capabilities of the QSNE platform, the cost of developing a social network is many times lower than the cost of creating a platform from scratch. So if you have a brilliant idea and an insufficient budget, use the offer to co-finance your project.

2022 will not be the last year in the battle of social networks for users' attention. So how do you join this battle and win? Contact X Networks, and you will get a first-class solution to triumph.