4 Guidelines to Building Social Media Apps

By Jayvee FernandezSocial Media

Truth is, there are no rules set in stone to building applications revolving around social media. What is true is that there are a lot of them sprouting from the hedges these days. Some of them are built as a content platform, while others are built to supplement existing platforms.

1. It should have the function of an aggregator. Blogs have RSS feeds. You can grab these feeds and have them displayed in an easy to use home page tool like Pageflakes. With the rise of social media, your blog’s home page no longer is the main landing page. With the advent of FriendFeed, Twitter hashtags and yes even something as simple as cross posting your latest post to other blogs and social networks you own, your content becomes ubiquitous over the Internet given the fact that each of your social platforms may cater to a different target market. Developers should be able to see the value in making their users content as ubiquitous as possible.

2. “Social” should be beyond adding friends, generated because of true interest in a particular community. In the old days of MySpace and Friendster, the benefits of adding friends were really limited to being able to see each other’s profile. Today, the concept of building a community goes beyond having a friends list. If you do a Google search for “Friendster,” your top results include free custom themes made by community members. In the realm of mobile tech, you have Apple, Android and Nokia building a platform allowing a community of developers to converge by providing SDK’s for their operating platforms. In Twitter, a community is built upon hash tags to promote specific topics and advocacy.

3. Content can be imported and exported easily. Apart from Blogspot and WordPress, one of the better blogging tools out there is

13 thoughts on “4 Guidelines to Building Social Media Apps”

  2. So according to your opinion, what’s the best social apps? Should we stop with only one or two social apps? I bet you that there’ll be a lot of social apps will come in the future.

  3. Social media speak to a new way of understanding how individual users are interacting with branded content via online publishers, social networks, blogs, and applications. The 4 guidelines that mention here are indeed helpful to user of social media applications.

  6. This is great guidelines for social media application…it is very helpful..and i agree to #2 it not just adding friends but also it should have benefits to the users..

  7. “The point that I wanted to drive at is that social media is beyond just building apps. There’s a certain mindset you have to align yourself to before you engage a community that is easily distracted, easily intolerant of services that do not work. There are obviously more things you can add to this list, and I encourage you to do so, but I hope you do agree with me that social media isn’t just about churning apps and creating the “next Facebook” or “next Twitter” but by taking to heart certain precepts on how communities work in order to build something truly authentic.”

    True, some of us see social media as something to ‘socialize’ and not make more of it anymore. I really agree with this post that we should try to broaden our point of view regarding trivial matters such as this, since social media can be the next ‘big’ thing in internet marketing or blogging whether be it Twitter, MySpace, StumbleUpon and a lot more, long as you know how to use it.

  10. I would especialy agree with #2. If your social platform offers only the possibility to add friends and nothing more, why would I use it? You need something unique.

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