Private Social Platform for Family Networking
The social media platform is designed to connect family members and allow them to share their memories through multimedia, with albums-like content management
Product type
Social networking
Team
11 members
Started in
2023
Country
USA
About a Project
The сustomer is a US-based B2C startup eager to address barriers to private family social networking. The idea was to bring a platform where close people could interact in a secure environment. The customer chose Cleveroad, a recognized social media app development company, to build the solution against their demanding timeline.
Goals set to Cleveroad
Create a social media platform from scratch to connect people with their family and friends to preserve and share their memories in the story form
Create an intuitive and compelling platform with unique features to differentiate on the Social Networking market
Provide the customer with dedicated development team services to deliver the social platform for family members within the specified timeframes
Solutions we've delivered
Development of the cross-platform social network with features covering the solution’s business logic. Integration of the sophisticated access management system to manage different levels of trust
Building of the customized social network with unique functionality, including from-scratch creation of the Family-tree feature that allows users to track relations and create a family circle
Assembling the relevant dedicated development team (just in line with the product’s demands) to take over the complete engineering process of the family-centered social networking platform
Results for the Customer
New ads-free social network with families in mind. The Yourstotell application is available at App Stores, engages new followers, and allows the customer to capture value due to well-built software product
An online family community with features that have no analogs on the competitive market. The solution now enables the client to attract the audience and maintain its exclusive qualities to flesh out against established industry players
Dedicated development team services that allowed the customer to receive full support for the social platform creation on the provider’s side and receive the solution within the supposed timeframes
Business Challenges
Our customer, a US-based B2C startup company, wanted to build an ads-free social network to foster communication and share life stories within the family circle based on trust level. The social networking niche oriented toward families was relatively saturated, so the client was hurrying to validate the concept's viability and release the first version within 6 months. The customer commissioned Cleveroad to build software, taking into account their profound expertise in social media software development services. The key goals for this IT initiative were the following:
Make a social network centered around family. Build an ads-free social media platform to allow users to systemize, save, and share their memories with relatives in the story format using various types of content, unite into groups, add user relations, and tag other people. It was required to implement a tiered content management system and advanced privacy settings system with role and rights control to manage trust level
Engage users with a memorable value proposition. Create and launch a bespoke social media platform to be able to grow the user base in the highly competitive social networking niche. It was necessary to implement distinctive functionality to maintain the solution’s competitiveness and induce a high Return on Investment (ROI) over the long term.
Launch the solution promptly to capture market share. Form a dedicated engineering team that would clearly understand the startup’s needs and the needs of the target users and would be able to develop an effective social media community for family members. The features had to be delivered on time to ensure the project’s deliverables were aligned with the product launch plan.
Project in Details
Business Architecture
- A cross-platform mobile application was optimized for iOS and Android devices, with features required for a private family community platform. Users can customize privacy settings to control who can view their content and designate the user roles and permissions within the family circle.
- The web-based Admin Panel is designed to manage the family-centered social network by the Super Admin and Admin. It's necessary to properly supervise users, content, subscriptions, and other responsibilities to carry out admin activities and support the platform's users.
- In-app purchases module implementation to monetize the digital community via paid plans. It allows the business to generate revenue from users who are keen to pay for a premium experience. Users can buy subscriptions to unlock exclusive content produced by other users within the family network.
Product Essentials
Family Tree is a unique feature with no analogs regarding user experience and sets the platform apart in the Social market. It allows users to make family relations dependencies in user profiles by adding other users to the Family Tree and having all members mentioned in one place. This is a custom component created by our skilled engineering team. Developing and implementing such advanced functionality requires unique capabilities that not every tech vendor possesses.
The Tree architecture promotes community engagement by helping users view and manage their family history with easy tapping. Users can also access family members' profiles right from that Tree and review other users' Family Trees.
A tiered-based content management system was designed with a hierarchical structure in mind. It allows users to create any content type and organize it within the album system. Users can invite others to their albums, manage access levels, and add others’ albums to their own if a permission is available.
The Autoplay feature is introduced to ensure a smooth user experience. It lets users view all album content in autopay mode without needing manual interaction. Platform users can disable this feature if they are keen to have a more conscious viewing experience or want to prevent accidentally scrolling past content.
Setting up profiles allows users to personalize their experience by adding avatars and personal information. For security reasons, we implemented the one-time password (OTP) verification to protect user accounts from unauthorized access.
Sophisticated privacy settings enable users to make their account and the content private or public and define access levels for each type of privacy. These settings are flexible tools that allow users to designate access permissions gradually to their content.
In-app purchases are integrated to enable users to purchase subscription plans directly from the application. They're implemented through secure payment systems offered by the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
Users can buy subscriptions to view paid content provided by other users. As a content creator, users can define permission levels and set whether their content is free or paid.
The Administration Panel covers functionality for both Admin and Super Admin. It provides access to various functional modules within a social media platform for families.
- User administration. The admin can manage all the users of the family-oriented social system. Admins can access filtering functionality and view an individual user profile and block or even delete a user account if necessary.
- Content management. Platform Admins are responsible for maintaining the quality and relevance of content available to users. Administrators can access the reports list and check reported user profiles and content.
- Subscription management. The admin can access all users' subscription lists, check their statuses, and verify user subscriptions.
Development in Detail
- We provided the customer with full-cycle software development services which included the Discovery phase to comprehend the solution’s requirements, followed by the Engineering phase to technically implement the concept. For the project, Cleveroad assigned a dedicated development team comprising a project manager, business analyst, solution architect, UI/UX designer, web and mobile developers, QA and DevOps engineers, and Team Leads.
- There were 2 main stakeholders on the customer side: a Founder (CEO) and CTO. The company’s CTO was involved in the discovery phase, validating our tech experts’ suggestions for feature implementation and agreeing on the recommended technical approaches. The CEO was engaged with the team during discovery and development phase meetings, with access to specification documentation and providing feedback in Figma for our team.
- During the Discovery phase, Cleveroad’s team worked out the product’s requirements in close cooperation with the client. In this phase, we made a deep dive into the project, employing various business analysis tools and techniques, such as Value Stream, Mind Map, Sequence Diagram, Activity diagrams, and more. We used all these tools to better reveal the business demands and expectations and understand the behavior of the future relatives' social network. We provided additional value for our customers by conducting demos with our internal focus groups, including C-level company representatives to reveal potential growth areas.
- In the Development phase, we settled on Flutter technology, which allows us to build an optimized family-oriented social app for iOS and Android platforms. The solution contains unique features which are not available in competitors' markets. One such functionality is the Family Tree module which our team created from scratch. It represents the customer’s idea of creating a close family circle where users can add their relatives and mention their relations. We opted for an Agile project management approach and stuck to an iterative development process. Our team completed the first release within 6 months.
Technology stack
The technology stack was chosen, considering the needed functionality for the family social platform
Web Architecture
Backend
Frontend
Mobile Architecture
Cross platform
AWS Infrastructure
Results Obtained
Increase in the engaged users due to focused solution
Our client got an ads-free social network that made it possible to provide the best user experience for families. Now, users can stay connected with friends and family to create, keep, and share their life stories within close family circles. It resulted in a raised number of interested users looking to socialize with relatives in a private way
Captured market share by introducing unique features
The Yourstotell application is already available in stores and attracts new users. We created some unique functionalities that have no analogs among the competitors. It allowed our client to gain a portion of the social networking market focused on families and increase the business capitalization rate resulting from software development
Project velocity due to dedicated team services
Through a partnership with Cleveroad, the company got a team of experienced software engineers who launched the first version of the relatives' social network within the planned timeline of six months. Currently, we continue to provide custom software development services for the client to implement and release new platform functionality
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