The future and opportunities with Social+

In recent years, there’s been a steady decline in participation in traditionally in-person community activities, with memberships dropping for religious groups, non-profits, labor unions, and other shared-interest collectives. We are, at our core, social in nature. We crave connection and community outside of social media, and when we don't have it, things start to fall apart.

Lately mainstream social media has been chastised for a variety of reasons, including privacy concerns, discussions over moderation and censorship, and concerns about the possibly detrimental mental effects of consuming (and comparing oneself to) highly curated content.

This trend is fueling the rise in popularity of niche functional communities, which allow members to "kill two birds with one stone." This is where Social+ products stand out from social media platforms–and the brands that rely on them to grow their communities.

Products with a built-in social component have stronger user engagement, stickiness, growth loops, and defensibility.

"Social" is a universal and everlasting urge.

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Categories that have gone Social+

Social+ Gaming - The Witcher vs. Fortnite

Although The Witcher game series is one of the most popular RPG in recent years, it lacks the social aspects of Fortnite or Minecraft.  Within the game, there is no user-generated content or a true social network. The Witcher franchise is valued at hundreds of millions of dollars, Fortnite generated nearly $2 billion in revenue last year alone. As a result, the best games resemble social networks rather than Netflix blockbusters.

Social+ Audio: Audiobooks/podcasts vs. Clubhouse

Podcasts, audiobooks, and the audio format as a whole are experiencing a renaissance. However, while the medium has primarily been single-player and inactive during the explosive podcast period, this is changing. Clubhouse and a few other firms have taken the same idea and added a social layer that has allowed users to generate and share more content on their platforms. Social+ audio is certainly a growing sector, even though it is still in its infancy.

Social+ Shopping - Alibaba vs. Pinduoduo

It may sound strange to refer to social commerce (or a $100 billion corporation) as "emerging," but we believe commerce is still transitioning into the social sphere, at least in the West. While we don't anticipate Pinduoduo—or any other social buying platform—to surpass Alibaba anytime soon, the fact that it has grown from zero to more than $100 billion in less than five years demonstrates the power of social commerce.

Social+Music - Spotify vs. (Musica.ly)Tiktok

Spotify is fantastic, but it is largely a one-player game. Music, on the other hand, is a communal activity by definition. Even if they didn't technically develop a social graph, Tiktok—formerly musica.ly—figured out how to make music social by licensing music, adding viral "challenges," and making user-generated material easier to create. The market capitalization of Spotify is around $50 billion after 14 years. Despite the fact that Tiktok is still a private company, recent public projections indicate that it will surpass that milestone in less than 5 years.

Social+ Money - Interactive Brokers vs eToro

There are many online exchanges and trading platforms from Robinhood to Interactive Brokers that allow you to do pretty much anything an investor and trader needs such as purchasing stocks or bonds. However, in recent years retail investors  no longer trade in solo manner, but rather use the power of the internet to share and organize their trades through online forums such as Reddit's WallStreetBets or Twitter and at Kitcod we believe that's only the tip of the iceberg. Just look at eToro that has been able to capture many of the social  behaviors by allowing its users to see each other's portfolios,  share their opinions on each stock / commodity in the newsfeed section and the infamous Copy-trading function. Today more than ever trading apps are looking to adopt eToros social features and that is exactly what we are here to help with.

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Open Social+ categories yet to be won

Surprisingly, there are still a number of possibilities available to creative businesses. Some people are naturally more sociable than others, but we believe that every group will become social at some point. Rather than the categories that have already gone social, the most exciting feature of the Social+ wave is how much potential still exists. Although many activities are fundamentally communal in their analogue form, the digital version remains a single-player experience.

Social+ Food

Eating isn't usually sociable (particularly during COVID), but when it is, it's a tremendously social experience. Restaurants and dinner gatherings are wonderful, but we won't be returning to them in full force for some time. We've seen a lot of innovation in food recently, from virtual kitchens to food delivery to meal kits to plant-based food, but Social+ food has eluded us thus far.

Social+ Fitness

Working out is an intrinsically social experience for many people. Crossfit and Zumba are more like cults than goods for a rising subset of super-users. However, many fitness-related digital products are solo experiences that lack the social aspects of their analogue counterparts. Strava, for example, has some fantastic social components, but it hasn't broken the code completely yet. Peloton's leaderboard is entertaining, but it's only a sliver of what could be a more robust social experience. There's so much more that can be done here to attract the fitness community's attention. Consider how engaging the world's first fully worldwide Social+ fitness product would be.

Social+ Real estate

It's also a social experience where and how we live. Many people pick where to live and work depending on their social experiences, whether with roommates, neighbors, or local communities. Real estate is a trillion-dollar industry that has spawned multibillion-dollar businesses like WeWork and Opendoor. Whoever succeeds in threading the needle—layering the social experience of our neighborhoods and communities on top of the transactional layer of real estate—will have created something extraordinary.

Social+ Education

School is an important part of many people's social lives. However, the majority of what we've seen in online education thus far has been passive and one-sided. This, too, is changing in both the west and around the world. Companies like EdApp are starting to add more social components such as collaborative-learning to their programmes to improve both the experience and the efficacy.

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Reshape your development process with KITCOD Social SDKs 

Fortunately, Kitcod UI Kits, APIs, and SDKs will allow you to implement social features like user profiles, feeds, and groups into your app in days, allowing you to participate in the Social+ trend.

Establish in-app communities with the Kitcod Social SDK. Enable plug-and-play social features with supercharged social APIs and watch preference-based groups thrive on your platform.

Allow users to create interesting content and interact with one another via comments and responses. Individuals can tailor their material timelines by following other people or subjects, as well as joining other organisations. Activity feeds are an excellent way to learn more about your customers on a more personal level. Important content can be posted as announcements to interact with your users right away.