Social media platforms are one of the easiest ways to connect with family, friends, meet new people, and make one feel a sense of community. Social media has enabled people to connect and stay in touch with each other from all corners of the world especially during the pandemic when the need for social media platforms increased as people went into lockdowns. This eventually led to a rise of new social media apps that have taken the digital space by storm. The rise of these new apps allows internet users to interact with others in different ways. If you have time to experiment on these new apps or if you are planning on reaching the early adopters/ trendsetters in this platform, it is essential to try these applications while they are still new to see what they have to offer. Here are some of the new apps to look out for:
BeReal
BeReal is a social media app that was developed in 2020 that has grown in popularity this year. The app asks users to post unfiltered photos of themselves and what they are doing in an aim to show authenticity online instead of users struggling to pose and put out filtered pictures. The app sends a prompt every day at a different time so that all your friends capture a photo within two minutes. According to research by Social Media Today, the app has had a 315 per cent increase in downloads since the beginning of the year. With over 80 per cent of the users being between age 16-24, BeReal is an app on the rise. Most of its users enjoy it because of the privacy and authenticity of content. BeReal has 73.5 million monthly active users, with the vast majority of those downloads happening in 2022, and 20 million access the app daily. The app is most popular in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom and France. The app has been lauded for its informality and spontaneity which has led to its popularity among young people.
Twitch
Twitch became popular for use by gamers livestreaming their games and has become a hugely popular app with over 15 million users every day. For this app users can watch their favorite creators playing video games and interact with them. Twitch allows game lovers to follow gaming personalities and just like sports fans enjoy watching their games live, gamers also get to enjoy watching their favorite gamers play, learn and interact with them. During the pandemic, many deejays used the app to stream their live music sets online as well. According to Demand Sage, Twitch has 31 million daily active users, and as of March 2022, Twitch has 140 million unique visits each month.
Locket
Locket is an app that was developed to turn Apple’s widget system, which is typically used to showcase information like the news and weather, into a private social networking platform. The app works by requesting access to your iPhone contacts and camera and allows users to invite friends using standalone invites, giving it a more privacy focused approach. As per Apptopia’s Appstore data in January this year, Locket had become the number one social networking app with one million global downloads. The app aims to ensure that young people can access a private social media platform which is not ad-centric and metric centric and stay up to date with what their friends and family are doing throughout the day. Being an app that is only restricted to iPhone users, as of now, the app has amassed over 20 million downloads and hopes to achieve its core premise of focusing on your closest connections.
Chirp Network
Chirp is a content sharing app that allows users to share content without using traditional medium such as texts, Bluetooth, Google Drive and Dropbox. It works by uploading content to its server and converting the link into a series of cheeps that transmit to other people. The content in not kept on the server permanently and any device near you can hear your devices chirp when you send one and can therefore receive the content shared. Chirp is taking the concept of Twitter to another level and with time could become one of the most popular apps not just for social networking but also for brands to interact with their audiences. Chirp Network promises its users a bot free, open-source platform.
Metaverse
Facebook recently announcing their rebranding to Meta and launched the Metaverse, a set of digital spaces including immersive 3D experiences that are interconnected so that you can easily move in between them. The Metaverse is meant to feel like a hybrid of today’s online social experiences seamlessly stitched together so that you can jump from one activity to another. The Metaverse has been positioned as a gamechanger by enabling users to feel like they are sharing a space together. This will change the interactivity abilities on social media and how users relate to each other online. The concept of the Metaverse has served as a powerful vehicle for repackaging old tech and selling the benefits of new tech.
Mastodon
Mastodon is an open-source software that runs self-hosted social networking services. It has micro-blogging features similar to Twitter and gained popularity when Elon Musk bought Twitter and started making changes that threatened to change how the social networking site operates. Mastodon’s micro-blogging features are run by independent nodes known as instances. One of the key features of this platform is the fact that it puts decision-making back in the hands of the users. Each server is able to create their own rules, which are enforced locally, making it one of the most flexible apps in responding to the needs of people. Moreover, Mastodon supports video, audio, pictures and more to allow the users to be able to express themselves on the platform. According to Fortune, the Mastodon active user base has soared from 300,000 to 2.6 million since Elon Musk bought Twitter. The influx of users on this platform shown that many users are looking for a substitute for Twitter and in a few years, this platform could be matching the likes of Twitter in size.
