How to Make an App Like Facebook?

Across the entire modern demographics of developed civilizations, there is one thing running common: Mobile Technology. Be it teenagers or elderly people, Mobile app is where socials now come alive and thrive.

Facebook is mainly accountable for pioneering this incredible trend of virtual gatherings in 2004, followed by Twitter and Instagram.

Social Media App cost

Its mobile app continued to keep intact the legacy for years now, leaving many of app entrepreneurs curious as to what exactly they need to imitate a success as glorious as Facebook.

If you are one of those business startups seeking expert insight into creating a social engagement world on mobile like Facebook, you have landed in the right place.

Read Also: 15 Best Facebook Apps For Android & iOS 2021

This blog is going to enlighten you on Facebook facts while walking you through the actual development process and its development cost

About Facebook

fb application

Mark Zuckerberg found Facebook partnering with Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, and Dustin Moskovitz. It was launched in the market in the year 2004.

To everybody’s surprise, it eventually became the world’s most renowned social networking and social media app.

The Facebook app is a user-friendly app that follows the basic concept of allowing users to find friends, relatives, and colleagues with the help of their location.

It targets almost every kind of users who are at the age of 13 or above 13.

The features of Facebook like, share and comment people express their thoughts and feelings with others.

Facts and Statistics on Facebook:

Today nearly 2.01billion daily active users are relying on Facebook not only for personal expression but also to publish advertisement and marketing visuals.

facebook app statistics

It would be interesting to learn some of the compelling facts and statistics around Facebook mobile app:

How to make a Social Media App?

To deliver a quality product to users, you need some basic steps to develop a social media app.

1) Strategy

After having an idea to develop a social media app, build an overall strategy. Your strategy should include market analysis, targeted audience, and competition research.

You must go through other social media apps to see their strong features and the things they lack.

2) Design the app

It is important to create an attractive design for the app; to engage users and retain them. Choose a unique app design enhanced beautifully with some unique app features.

facebook app design

Choose the right technology and user-specific features to design the app.Facebook stands out and stay on top due to its incredibly powerful, addictive and engaging UI elements.

Nothing is redundant in there, which interestingly allows users to promote their network more actively.

3) Preparing for the development

Documentation

Make a list of all the functions of a future project. It will decide your social media app goals and all its functions.

Domain Name

Before developing your app, select the name for your social networking app and domain name also. The purchase domain name and hosting from a trusted platform.

mobile app development

Hosting

If you are planning to start a large networking app with assumptions of 5 million users, use powerful servers like VPS. Powerful servers will enable you to bear high loads.

4) Development of social network

The development of the social networking app starts with the technology you used. You can use two types: ready-made CMS and frameworks.

Social Network CMS

These are a market-ready social network with typical functions and template design. You’ll only need to develop a design and customize it with your requirements.

Despite the fact that these CMS contain some struggles and pose known challenges, some of the most popular CMS for social networks are: Dolphin, Php Fox, Buddy Press, Social Engine, etc.

facebook app cms

The problems you are likely to face with them are:

  • These CMS are very slow in working because they can’t bear the high load.
  • If you want to add new features, it will levy more efforts and concerns about time and cost.
  • The customization of the project needs a lot of time.

Frameworks

These are used for the development of different web applications. Frameworks are designed to improve and increase the speed of the coding process.

facebook app frameworks

Frameworks provide high stability, scalability and high speed. There are as many as 10 famous frameworks that you can use to develop social networking app like Facebook. A few amazing app builders tools are:

  • React Native
  • PhoneGap
  • Ionic
  • Flutter
  • Xamarin
  • Corona SDK
  • Mobile Angular UI
  • JQuery Mobile

The only challenge of using a framework is that the project needs to be developed from scratch, starting from the fist block up.

Although, it is inevitable that this process needs time and resources, it always works auspiciously like a stable architecture for structurally intricate social apps.

The key purpose of any great framework is having ability to rapidly transform a non-uniform idea into a well-organized, functional and aesthetically appealing product for end users.

Read Also: 24 Best Social Media Apps 2021

5) Testing and launching of social media app

When you finish developing your social media app, it is necessary to test the app. Remove all the bugs during sign up or log in; as it will affect your app promotion. The users of your app should enjoy the experience.

facebook app gif

6) Marketing

It is very important to approach to the right audience for your app; who will feel your social media app as the part of their life. So it is important to conduct an active advertising campaign.

It is necessary to attract at least 50,000 visitors per day. You can use Google Adwords, Facebook ads, and Guest Post to create enough traffic for your app.

7) Monetizing your social media app

Most of the networking sites are kept free like Facebook. Users should have free access to most of the functions of the app. But make sure that some functions need a small fee to get access.

From your 100% users, only 1% of users will access those functions of your app; but still that 1% will give you a good income.

monetize

You can make money from Facebook’s advertising space that appears on users’ wall on homepage, at the bottom of the current page or occasionally at landing page.

The advertisers should pay every time users click on it through your app. For this, you have to manage a separate platform for the advertisement.

8) Investment

Once your app becomes famous; investors are attracted automatically towards your project. You have to take care of your app; check your app constantly that it should be bugless and it should not crash.

Nowadays social media apps are a part of everybody’s life. Every person is different and they try to find social media app according to their suitability.

Make an app that contains everything like friends, posts, profiles, a news feed, messenger, searching, push notifications, photos, videos, and offline working options.

Estimated Cost to Develop a Social Media App

The cost to develop the social media app depends on the functionality, time, design scope, the platform used, developers fee, and additional features.

Following the usual contemporary practice, the cost of the application is calculated on the basis of the hourly rate.

The app cost ranges from $20 to $200 which is again subject to the consideration that the ultimate cost would be a reflection of the number of advanced features expected of the app.

Read Also: How To Create An App Like Instagram

Final remarks: Building an app like Facebook

The incessant global gravity to using Social media apps doesn’t seem to wear off and so the demand for developing a widely celebrated app like Facebook will remain unquenched.

The Facebook not only helps people from every corner of the world connect, but it also helps marketers and emerging commercial bodies promote their business.

mobile application development cost

Hence, even from the perspective of future profitability, the time to emulate Facebook is now.

On your journey, however, it is best to connect with an adroit and seasoned mobile app development agency and solicit their consultation.

Hence, for all the good reasons involved, you may find it favorable to communicate your project scope with us. We will make sure all the depth and vision of your requirements are addressed perfectly while forming a working rapport.

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How To Make a Social Media App?

Social media is incessant and infinite in its strength and éclat, making for massively promising domain not just for users but also for elite business entities. With social media platforms dominating the world of marketing and advertising, business wanting to capture ample audience can see it as a lucrative opportunity.

Of course, the competition in this market is simmering with a few jubilant players. But as technology evolves, the new creative social app development ideas are getting big attention.

Before embarking on the social media app development project, expertise in mobile device is must. If you are planning to break into the social market through a dedicated mobile app, you must realize that the major cost falls on the shoulder of backend developers, and that challenges for making it from scratch are high. Therefore, you require great deal of resources and talent to make it work.

Here is how you can give it a jump start:

Main ingredients of social media app

1. Integration with existing social media

The power of true user experience often stems from enabling users to explore the full-fledged interaction. Since they already are a member of a few other famous social platforms, they expect your app to provide them with a button to stay connected with those profiles. Your app can allow them to login to the app using existing social accounts.

2. Sharing expressions

Users want to set a stage of expression on your social app to flaunt their unique creative ability. Your social media app must contain features that empowers users to share their life stories and experiences along through personalized profiles, videos, backgrounds and customized pictures. Take examples of YouTube, Instagram, Flickr, Vimeo, Snapchat, etc.

3. Creating a network

Being able to connect with distant friends and increasing the number of followers make the platform more desirable for users. Like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, social app developers must create a system that lets members to invite new friends.

Read Also : 24 Best Social Media Apps 2021

Smart networking system can help build communication between people. LinkedIn provides professional networking opportunity whereas Tinder, Badoo and Grindr enables personal and dating services

4. Reviews

Social media app doesn’t necessarily need to be confined to mean just social. Since users leave great loads of data, users can take advantage of this information to make purchasing decisions just like Yelp.

The app can know users’ geolocation and let them leave comment and suggestions about interesting brands or local businesses.

5. Newsfeed

Content is what attracts people to decide and subscribe to services. Social network apps run on influential content.

Through expressions, status, video, photos and audio sharing, users generate colossal amount of content in order to display their opinions and be heard.

Therefore, iOS and Android app should contain news feed very typical of quintessential social apps.

6. Community forums

Community forums and discussions like Quora, Disqus and Reddit are fundamental to social apps. Such knowledge sharing can form the basic mechanism of powerful social interactions within the app.

7. Publishing platforms

Blogging and microblogging platforms make for social media services users capitalize to publish creative text and media content. Examples of such apps are Medium, Your Story and Tumblr.

8. Interest-focused networks

Interest-based media creates a powerful community of like-minded people who share similar interests. A media app this genre creates tremendous appeal by bringing together individuals of common tastes. Goodreads is for literature lovers, for example, and Last.fm and Spotify are for music fanatics.

Read also : How To Create an App like Instagram?

9. Private Chat conversations

Having a built-in service of private communication increase ROI for social networking app as it inspire users to resort to your app more often to connect with their friends and followers.

This means users will spend more time in your app.

Creating a  Social Media App

To build such an ambitious social networking app, you should ask developers to first create an MVP for the app. MVP contains core features and functionality that let you test its performance while saving on investment and time.

After acquiring good buzz, you can scale it up to add more features andUI/UX elements. To keep the app’s performance up and healthy, you need powerful architecture built of:

1. Backend

This is a backbone of your mobile app that handles intense rush of http requests as a result of numerous user actions happening within your app.

Node.js, .NET, Xamarin are a few great options to pick for building a mighty, high-performance and scalable networking app backend.

2. Database

MySQL databases along with SQLite or NoSQL are amongst the most preferable database tech for social networking apps as it swimmingly takes over dynamic contents.

3. Hosting

To handle constantly fluctuating traffic to your app and on-demand uploads along with likes and shares and other stress, you need a reliable hosting service plan. AWS is a competitive and widely used option with superior adaptive capability and scalability.

Read also : How much does it Cost to Create an App like Instagram?

4. 3rd Party APIs

Integration of3rd party APIs is the convenient option for mobile app developers as it reduces the efforts needed to build every single part of your social app and enables certain readymade solutions.

APIs can be integrated for solutions like payments, push notification, geolocation and other sensor-based indicators.

Basic steps of developing social media app

You should follow these critical steps for a creating successful social media app:

1) Target audience

In this phase, the idea is analyzed and studied to understand the requirements and map out the target audience. The first step to creating a successful social app is to identify the user needs and challenges they face.

In the end, project analysts can derive KPIs to be achieved in a social media niche. Developers now have a substantial choice of using a ready framework designed to create custom social apps with excellent user experience.

2) Calculating realistic estimates

Once determining the target audience, it is time to build a strategy and calculate realistic budget estimates. If your wish is to create highly engaging and technically immaculate social networking app, as an entrepreneur you should consider investing wisely. Too limited budget can’t produce the app you desire.

The cost estimate depends on the platform you choose, and iOS could be a great option to first develop an app. Then you can opt for Android platform later. Though it is hard to estimate traffic volume, it is essential to prepare database for end users.

3) Design considerations

The social networking design strategy starts with a basic outline and a rough sketch that includes expansive logic, screens to target and layout.

Then comes preparing a good wire frame which is important to development team as they begin to conceive a skeleton and structural view of the app.

Read also : How To Create Video Chat Apps

The next step is to create a prototype that represents a working model of the app and gives detailed understanding of what it is going to be. You can make changes to prototype idea before developers start writing the app.

This is followed by the design of app skin where app wire frame is used to create a solid design.

4) Development & QA testing

Due to rising development process technologies such as DevOps, design, development and QA testing phases are often synchronized and combined to run in perfect symphony.

After prototyping step, developers consider all technical requirements to start sculpting its backend architecture and implement servers, database, APIs and more.

Engineers focus on all the latest guidelines and platform terms for native iOS and Android app development to deliver brilliant performance.

During and post development, testers leverage manual and automated testing and cover extensive use cases to ensure the app is bug-free and well-programmed and has its expected UX standard.

5) Publish, Market and Promote

After everything is checked and tested, the app is deployed. Your app development partner will help you publish the app on popular online stores and create a comprehensive marketing strategy to evangelize the app.

The marketing team will optimize the app marketing with description content and video guides so that businesses can save time on making the app stand out at Google Play or the Apple Store market as well as on popular social media platforms.

Read more : How To Create A Chat App Successfully

Make sure you communicate your concerns about what all are included in your project contract. Some companies separate the cost of development from the fees reserved for marketing and promotion activities.

Also, to achieve better audience, it is advisable to start marketing the app 3-4 months before the app is ready to publish.

Conclusion

Social media app development is not as straight as it seems. The process is rife with many challenges and brainstorming.

Only a veteran mobile app development company with extensive experience, rugged resources and competitive talents can help you build a successful social networking app and fulfill your business goals. They know what technologies best align with your business objective and help create fascinating features.