Social Photo Sharing App Development

Nowadays photos and videos are an integral part of anyone’s life because of the advent of smartphones. Be it a special moment or random clicks, people around the world try to capture every minute of their life on their smartphones and mobile apps. Such photo or video-sharing apps are gaining huge popularity in this digital era, offering new and unique features and creating incredible memories for all.

As per statista,  there are 1.6 billion social media network users worldwide, and there are 160 million social network users in the US alone.

Despite the growth and ubiquity of social networking apps, one of the problems that users experience with social apps is the push for “recommended” content and content that is not from their near and near ones and the constant push of advertisements is ruining the personal experience of the social network apps. 

This is where apps like BeReal come in. Launched initially in France, the app has now gained popularity across Europe, UK, and the US. Investors are also lining up to fund the expansion of the app now that the app is surging in popularity in all major markets.

What is BeReal App?

BeReal is trying to position itself as a more authenticated version of the social networking experience. Unlike other platforms that are discouraging personalized and intimate user experience with the help of algorithms and random recommendations and ads, BeReal only allows users to post once, avoiding the pitfalls of constant social media engagement, also users can only see others’ pics after they have posted their own. A randomly timed notification is sent to users and they have to post a picture that uses both the front and back camera to let others know where they are and what they are doing within two minutes of the notification. Users can react to each other’s pics with a selfie-and emoji attached to it. 

Authenticity and a personalized experience are the cornerstones of the success BeReal is receiving. Unlike other social platforms that use algorithms to increase user interest and usage, BeReal inversely tries to limit users’ use of the app and tries for a more authentic and participatory experience. 

Let’s discuss what kind of app development you will have to undertake and the key features of such an app.

Features of Social Photo Sharing App like BeReal

Signup & Sign In

Ideally, the application should have a sign-up & sign-in feature, & photo-sharing and photo-editing apps can offer users several sign-up options. Such as users can sign-up through a phone number or email and creating their own personal profile after filling up the requisite details. 

Camera

With special camera-specific features, Users can take both selfie and back camera photos. This will be a key feature of the app so you need to connect the app with the camera API of the phone. 

Discovery

Under this feature, users can share their pics publicly as well as discover what other people are doing who are connected by the users in their network.

Offer Challenges

Using the option of these challenges, the app can offer various unique challenges to all users. The challenges will enhance the creativity and networking skills of the user with the use of the app.

Send Comments

This feature allows users to send comments and chat with all their friends.

Send Real Emoji

To have a fun and more exciting feel, users can react to their friends with emojis and can represent their own various real emoji through this feature along with a selfie of their own.

Find Memories

With this feature, users can easily find all previous memories with a few clicks in the app if the other users allow their history to be recorded. 

Languages Support

This app can support new languages for all of you who speak German, Japanese, Korean & Chinese or any other world language.

Widget emoji

Users can see friends on their home screen when they react to your special widget emojis.

Post at the same time

Under this feature, all your friends can post at the same time and you can have a posting party. 

Notifications

This feature will allow your users to get real-time notifications, everyone, someone has likes or comments on their photos/videos, send add requests, mention them in comments.

The Approximate Technology Stack of the App

As per our app experts, this tech stack should serve well to create an app like BeReal. Although the final tech stack may differ based on a detailed estimate and technical understanding.

• Kotlin for Android App
• Swift for ios app
• Node.js for back-end
• Cloud environment: AWS
• Online Payments: Paypal, & Braintree.
• Elastic email, email notifications
• Socket io for real-time notification
• Database: MongoDB, Hbase, Cassandra, Postgres, MailChimp Integration
• Google Maps
• Google Places
• Google Directions
• Card.io
• APNS
• Firebase
• Facebook SDK for Facebook login

The following team may be needed for app development

• Business Analyst
• Project Manager
• UI/UX designer
• Android/ios developer
• Back-end developer
• Quality Analyst
• DevOps

Final Thoughts

With this era belonging to the photo-sharing apps, developing social photo-sharing apps can be really profitable to take on social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter which are more algorithm driven and less user driven. This will be significantly advantageous for your business to stand out in the vast social media apps space. We are a top mobile app development company that can help you develop a custom app like BeReal. Do drop us a line to have a free consultation with our app experts.