“Healthy” social apps
Musing #1 | the folly of the one-two punch, and side projects that command respect
🗝️ Greetings fellow theorists — this is a patron-only edition of Working Theorys where I share more casual and candid mini-theorys about top of mind ideas.
#1 “Healthy” social apps are usefulness-first
There was a question1 asked on Twitter about the nature of “healthy” social apps and whether and how they can work:
“Is building a "healthier" social app always dead on arrival? BeReal, Path, probably others.... Like if tiktok is mcdonalds, is there a market for a sweetgreen? Or do apps need to be indulgent.”
Over a long horizon, I don’t believe “healthy” apps can sustain momentum as public, open-network based products. For example, a healthy Twitter, healthy Instagram, healthy Tiktok wouldn’t get to massive scale and wouldn’t win at scale. The more mass public the network, the more the value prop needs to (and perhaps devolves to) appeal to base human desires — for entertainment, status, etc.
BeReal started as a healthy option focused on “real” friends participation instead of just mass consumption, and on random, “live” posting to minimize processed photos. But to keep people from getting bored, it seems to be trying to expand content type and open up the network to more discovery. Most recently it also announced a move into creator and brand presence, a monetization-hopeful direction. So BeReal did work as a kind of healthier option, but it’s hard to keep scaling and stay “healthy” in the truest sense of the phrase.
The more you have “healthiness” as a core feature, the more I believe you need to lean into utility, especially to start. I wrote a lot more on social utility here. It’s also worth drawing a distinction between true “social” apps and “media” apps.
You can also target a more niche group of people who have an identity around something “healthy.” The market size for vices always looks bigger than the market sizes for virtues. But that shouldn’t dissuade you from building something, it should make you more thoughtful about how you do it.
Strava is a good example that fits both the “utility” and “niche” attributes. It started out as a utility to track your own runs, eventually built in more community features, and now is trying to become a social app too. It recently launched DMs! And the utility focus with premium features has allowed it to monetize strongly along the way.