Why the future of community is in your company’s own app

Social media is dying – at least as businesses have come to know it. Meta’s earnings call is just the latest signal that Facebook is no longer the ultimate destination for brand awareness and connecting with customers. The tech giant’s profit was halved compared to the same quarter a year ago. This caused his stock to spiral.

There seem to be two main culprits at play: a significant drop in digital advertising (thanks to Apple’s App Tracking Transparency) and younger users drifting to newer platforms, such as TikTok, at the expense of Meta’s Facebook and Instagram.

While a new wave of social apps has exploded among Gen Z users and others, one simple truth remains: if you don’t own the platform, you have no real control over your interactions with your audience. And this should prompt companies to think about their next steps.

How did we get here?

Facebook, around 2010, was demonstrable the place for businesses to build community. That’s not to say that other social platforms didn’t have communities back then, but Facebook was the lowest common denominator.

Companies created business pages and encouraged their audience to “like” them, inviting consumers to engage with content there. This was all well and good – until it wasn’t.

About five years later, companies noticed that their Facebook pages generated less and less organic engagement with their fans. Upon closer inspection, it was clear that Facebook’s algorithms were taking control of what used to be organic reach. The new revenue model of the social giant was born. Companies started paying Facebook to let people see their content through promoted posts and ad campaigns.

Now, in light of the iOS 14 update and the cookie-less future of advertising, which will limit the amount of user data Facebook collects from third parties — and thus its ability to target ads with the same granularity — Facebook’s stranglehold on brands is not what it was. Combine that with younger generations’ preference for other social sites and services, and businesses are at a crossroads.

Organizations have spent many years and a lot of money building communities on Facebook, but communities, like technology, are constantly evolving. Facebook no longer meets the needs of businesses, but community has never been more important to brands.

Fortunately, there is a better, more decentralized way to build it.

Going solo to build community

The community that once made Facebook one of the largest platforms in the world will now flourish within individual applications instead. These applications can be targeted and engaging, making the community part of the overall experience. That means the new best way to build an active, relevant community around your brand is not to go to another social site, but to Your own app.

The community is your property, so you make the rules. It’s best to read the pulse of your users and provide a space that fits their needs to connect with others, find information, or create. If you’ve designed an environment that provides the features that users want and respect their privacy (assuming you don’t sell or share their data), you stand a good chance of creating a thriving community that adds value to your business.

Taking community in-app also gives you a natural connection to your topic or business. Compare these two basic scenarios:

1. A user is playing a video game and he/she pauses the game to compose a Facebook message that goes to a few people who may or may not understand what the person is talking about before resuming the game.
2. In the middle of the game, a user creates topic-based group chat, voice, or video messages that go directly to people who are also actively involved in the game.

Which scenario provides the highest level of engagement and fun? The answer is clear.

Providing an easy way for your community to interact within the context of your topic generates interest and creates connection. While gaming is an obvious example, the same principle applies to marketplaces, streaming platforms, dating apps, and just about any other product that invites conversation between users.

But will users show up?

In the past, brands have been reluctant to go their own way, in their own app, because Facebook already had a huge audience to draw from. As tempting as it is, if you look closer, in today’s reality it doesn’t look like what you imagined. Sure, Facebook has the audience, but can you really grab that audience’s attention when the market has become so crowded and overrun with everything from jokes to politics? The same risk applies to the future of other social platforms.

To stand out, brands need to create authentic quality content and robust conversations that bring users back. That’s where the hard work comes in, and that work doesn’t change whether the underlying technology platform is Facebook’s app or the brand’s own app.

You can’t just show up on Facebook and expect to attract an audience. If you’re going to put in the work to create a great place for conversations about the topics that matter to you, what exactly will Facebook or any other platform get you? That is the question that more and more brands are asking themselves.

Do conversations continue here?

In-app communities are a great way to invite more people to join and have positive experiences with your brand. In fact, they become table bets. But other options, such as the metaverse, emerge. Will they take over before in-app communities fully develop?

Meta has poured billions into creating a new online world. We are working hard to build a new type of community, one where brands and avatars can interact in a way that other social platforms don’t yet allow. Brands ranging from Wendy’s and Coca-Cola to Nike, Samsung, Gucci and Louis Vuitton are already here. But will it work? It’s a pretty big gamble.

At the recent Meta Connect event, Mark Zuckerberg said, “The metaverse needs to feel inspired.” Yes, it absolutely does, but it will inspire people and the community – not the better graphics revealed at the event. The presence of users and their ability to communicate in authentic ways make the metaverse a place worth visiting, and this is one concept that Meta hasn’t fully mastered yet: allowing people to enter the communities build the way they want, rather than algorithms forcing experiences on them.

Ultimately, communities are about people, not technology. The novelty of the metaverse is sure to draw a crowd, but soon technologies that allow people to immerse themselves in AR/VR will become widely available and user preferences will be back to square one: going where they can find authentic connections. Will that be in your app or as part of someone else’s experience?

John S. Kim is the CEO of Sendbird