Out of all the social media platforms I’m active on, Twitter is my favorite.
Which is weird because it’s where I actually know the least amount of people (in real life.)
I love how fast-paced it is and I actually find so many people there who are genuinely funny.
Hey, it’s a talent to get a genuine laugh out of me in 280 characters or less.
But … I also love the photos on Instagram.
There’s not a lot of room for a long, drawn-out caption.
It’s just a snapshot of someone’s life and then, boom! Onto the next one.
My least favorite for personal sharing is Facebook.
But that’s another story.
However, all of the above got me thinking about the perfect social media app and how I would create it.
Of course, when any question pops up in my head these days, I immediately wonder if it would make a good #SpinSucksQuestion.
This one definitely did and we asked:
If you could create your own social media app, what features would you definitely include? Which ones would you leave off? Tell me why those would be the choices you make.
What? You think a bunch of communications pros didn’t immediately jump to answer this question? Pshhh.
Social Media App? It’s Got to Be Personal.
The features I’d definitely include would be:
- Private groups where users in similar walks of life/interests/social circles could come together and lean on one other.
- Some way to organize the content that’s on any type of social app.
There’s just so much happening digitally that’s sucking up our time scrolling through newsfeeds and distracting us from the world in front of us. Having a way to access what you need without getting your attention jolted away by something interesting but irrelevant would be valuable.
What I wouldn’t include: The newsfeed for the reason I just stated. A social media app would inherently need some sort of discoverability feature but I think it’s time to innovate on what that looks like.
I would include a customizable, personalized algorithm. What Twitter and Facebook and so forth decide is interesting is usually not relevant to my actual interests. I’d love to be able to tweak a number of factors and have content surfaced that actually is relevant to my interests (and can be hot-swapped to different sets of interests).
A mutant of Slack’s community, Pocket’s article saving and highlighting, LinkedIn’s profile and professional development, and Watson Workspace’s auto summarization of what’s most important to me.
Easily Decipherable Privacy Controls
It would have 100% privacy controls, zero advertising, and a monthly fee. It would allow me to share anything I want with whomever I want. And facilitate conversations. All technology will be user-focused versus advertiser focused. Not sure I’d allow brand pages. When was the last user focused improvement on Facebook that anyone used? After livestreaming, in the last seven years all technology rollouts were for advertiser/exploiters. I would reverse that.
Straightforward privacy settings, encryption, suggestions of profiles with similar interests, flexible private group options, a newsfeed where I could easily unfollow contacts who share too much commercial content, several post formats possibilities (polls, videos, pictures, etc.), an upvote and karma system for posts and users similar to Reddit.
I’d love to have a way to filter audiences for content, so that family can easily be excluded or just post it for a few select people. Like a hybrid of Facebook’s audience tool, and Instagram’s close friends, but easier to use so that I don’t have to spend three hours setting up lists.
Attribution. We briefly had it with Simply Measured, but they killed it when they were acquired by Sprout.
Create Your Own Social Media App
Do you have some must-haves for your own social media app?
Or would it be a Frankenstein mashup of different features from various platforms?
Whatever your answer is, we want to hear it.
You can tell us in the comments down below or you can join our Spin Sucks community.
It’s an awesome place for communications pros to hang out and bounce ideas off of each other, get advice, and sometimes we even veer off into random discussions about movies and pop culture.
Hope to see you soon!