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Social media possesses the lives of many people all over the world. They allow us to find out the latest news, find friends, chat with other users, exchange information, share our thoughts and experiences. Social networks help people to express themselves, induce them to be creative and individual.
There is a wide range of different social media that can be useful in various areas. However, some of them are very successful and known all over the world. Here is the list of the most famous social networks that connect people from all over the world.
Facebook is considered to be the most popular and successful social media on the market. Monthly this platform gets about 2.45 million visitors. It connects people from various industries, countries, and nationalities. Some of the leading industries on Facebook include financial services, e-commerce, retail, gaming, entertainment, media, telecom, technology, consumer goods, and automotive businesses. Although this social media is rather old, it gets updated regularly and engages the same number of users as at the beginning of its work.
Twitter is a worldwide social media website that aims to connect people from different points of the world. This social network is used to exchange thoughts and discuss various topics. It is actively used by famous people like Presidents, politicians, actors, musicians, and other public figures. Monthly 330 million users visit Twitter and share their opinions with others.
Linkedin is a vast professional social media. More than 300 million users register or visit this website every month. This social network helps make business connections, post job descriptions, create resumes and find appropriate job positions. Linkedin is the space where you can find business partners, hire professionals to your company, and promote your project.
From the time of launching in 2010, Instagram gained immense popularity all over the world. It has a wide range of features for users. Initially, this website was made to create a personal account and share photos and videos with other users. Today it has changed a lot. This is a place to start and develop your business in many areas, promote your photos, videos, and texts. This social media helps to promote your product with paid ads and earn money. It is not just for young people; now, Instagram covers various ages, genders, and nationalities. It has more than 1 billion active users, and the number is continually increasing.
Snapchat is a popular social network launched in 2011. Its primary purpose is to share photos and videos with friends using various, funny filters. They are called snaps and disappear after the viewing. It is a kind of new type of camera as it has interesting effects that haven’t been seen before in any application. 
Pinterest is a creative social media where users usually look for inspiration. After registration, you start to fill your account. There you can create mood boards and pin photos and videos to them. Also, this social network shows many creative ideas for events, home interior, design, and other areas. Most of the users are female, so the target audience for Pinterest-like apps is pretty straightforward. Monthly this social media gets more than 322 million visitors. 
Reddit is an American social network where users can find the latest business and technology news, companies ratings from various industries, communities by topics, discussions, posts, links, etc. It was launched in 2005 and counts about 430 million active users. Reddit is considered to be “the front page of the internet”.
Types of social networking sites
The industry of social networking is constantly growing and developing. Moreover, all popular social media are divided into certain categories. These groups can be you to navigate in the area, find out their features and peculiarities to choose the one that you need. We prepared a list of various social media existing on the market:
Social network features
When it comes to the process of development of social media, the first and crucial step is to define the main features of your solution. You need a Business Analyst to identify and structure popular and vital options of all famous social networks to gather the best of them in your project. So we prepared a list of critical requirements for social media website development. They are the following:
- Registration – this feature is vital as it can make users stick with your app or leave it; this process should be simple, quick, and verified via email, phone number, etc
- Personal account – it goes right after the registration step; usually, users type their name, nickname, age, email, phone number, bio, photo, and safe password. Also, there should be diverse levels of access to information from other users. It means that the user needs to have the ability to hide some of the personal data.
- Posts – it is the way of expressing your own thoughts, sharing news, information and experience or tips with other users, your own photos or videos, etc.
- Search – this feature is essential as it gives the ability to search for community, person, news, advertisement, or any other thing on the whole social network for the last time. So it is preferable to make an advanced and easy-to-use search.
- Friends – this option implies sending a request to other users to become online friends and start chatting and exchanging posts, etc. Also, you can see others` personal info and posts.
- Newsfeed – it gives the ability to follow the latest updates in the communities, friends` accounts, newsgroups, etc. It keeps you aware of events.
- Personal wall – there you can repost other texts, videos, photos, and write about your thoughts, feelings, insights, etc.
- Chat or messenger – if you don’t like to chat in comments and want to be private, the chat is what you need. There you can communicate with other users as much as you want, send photos, videos, news, links, send files, and many other things.
- Saved items – it is an excellent option as users can save links with articles to read later if they don’t have time now and can lose it in the news feed.
- Notifications – new posts, messages, updates can be sent to users’ devices immediately.
- User Status – it is data about your marital status, place of birth, new place work, or study.
- Analytics – it is a noticeable feature for network owners to know the strengths and weaknesses of their social media, its audience, interests, and the right way of promoting.
- Admin Access – The purpose of this feature is to manage the work of the website by specialists, block suspicious activities and users, and perform other administrative functions.
Idea for a social media network
From the very beginning, the development process starts with an idea. As there is massive competition among popular social media websites, the idea has to be unique and valuable. Of course, you can go in the direction of copying features of existing social networks, but would it be on the same level? Not sure. Your main aim is to build a social media interest for your potential audience. Your website has to stand out among others by a particular area like music, sport, cinematography, etc., or technologies used for development. It is not a rare case when a person who has an idea of building a social network is afraid to share with others and of being deceived. However, this fear is false. To steal and develop your idea, other people would need a considerable amount of money and effort. Successful production of your idea can be performed only by your vision as it is your thoughts and creativeness.
To attract investors, you need to show that your solution has great potential for promoting and monetization. To build the individual solution, you need the help of professionals like Business Analysts. Don’t worry about the safety of your idea as every software development company signs NDA, and your idea will not be stolen or announced.
Start of social media development
Development of social media website
Starting the development of social media, specialists choose suitable technologies that will be for building your solution. These technologies can be divided into two groups – ready CMS and frameworks.
CMS social media
This way of development implies readymade social media with routine design and basic functionality. All you have to do is to create a new design and fit all features to your solution. Among popular CMS, social media are Socialengine, BuddyPress, phpFox, and others. This type of development has a range of disadvantages and specific potential errors. They are the following:
- low speed – it happens because of powerless server and intense load because of a vast number of users
- poor integration – it takes too many efforts, time, and money to implement new features and updates into your solution
- fitting to your project – it seems to easy to make a readymade solution suitable to your project, but it takes a lot of time, and there is no ability to create custom for 100% as new features can conflict with existing ones
Frameworks
Frameworks are used for the development of any type of web application. They are considered to be universal and created to improve the quality of code and code writing. Solutions based on frameworks have a high speed of loading, security, and scalability. The main complexity of this type of development lies in building a solution from scratch. It needs a lot of effort, time, and resources. However, you can be sure that your solution will be profitable and stable. It is a kind of investment.
Testing and launching process
Testing is a crucial part of any software solution. It is essential to reveal every error and bug. For example, problems that can appear during the registration on your social network will decrease the promotion of your website. Users expect exciting and straightforward interface and design, fast loading, and absence of error during the work with the site. All these together make them go back to your social media and invite friends.
Maintenance
After the release of your application, it still needs constant improvements and updates. You need to add new features to attract more users, eliminate errors, and present something innovative.
Our expertise in social media development
On our account, there are many social media projects developed from scratch.
Bestyn is a brand new social application developed for neighbors. With the usage of this solution, people who live in the neighborhood can chat, discuss local news, meet, offer services. It has a unique and creative design with powerful functionality. It has already been released and can be found on popular marketplaces like App Store.
The modern market of social media gives terrific opportunities to build an innovative website in various niches. We have developed many social media websites in such different industries. For example,
Industry Events is a social media app that helps you to find relevant events to your taste – lectures, conferences, forums, etc. It is useful for visitors as well as for speakers of these events as they can create their meetings.
GymGo is a website from an altogether different area. This social network connects sportsmen from all over the world. They record or perform training, train together online, share experience and tips about a healthy lifestyle.
Drophook is an innovative application for fishing where users can find suitable places for fishing, shops with the necessary equipment, weather forecast, etc.
As you can see, the need to build social networks exist in almost every possible area of our life. These apps make some processes easier and available. As people live to develop and learn something new every day, there is always an urgent need for new developments in all social spheres and business industries.
We know how important it is to build individual and suitable business strategies for your area. Moreover, we know how to make your solution successful and creative. Unique design, latest technologies, key features like scalability, privacy and networking, target audience – all these components create a new great social media. All you have to do is to combine them to make your social media famous with the help of professionalists.
For building a social media website, you need to find a team of real specialists who have rich experience and deep technical expertise in your individual area.
| SPECIALIST | COST per month |
| Business Analyst | $1700 |
| iOS & Android developers | $9810 |
| Back-end developers | $10100 |
| QA specialists | $6180 |
| Project Manager | $6800 |
| UX/UI Designers | $2300 |
Conclusion
The level of competition among social media is rather high nowadays. However, you need to remember one thing. Your project can become one of the best in the modern market if you pay attention to features and designs that will make your solution unique and innovative. The development of social media from scratch is a durable, expensive, and complex process that needs many efforts of the whole team of specialists. Don’t waste your time and don’t put your idea aside, give it a good thought, and start building your solution to enter the market.