Problem Statement

Currently, people are yearning for more authentic ways of interacting with others on social media. They want to meet others by joining communities they feel a sense of belonging to and have meaningful conversations based on trending topics. However, social media has swayed to offer ways for people to meet others genuinely or conveniently strengthen their current friendships and community bonds through audio chat groups. This product addresses this problem by providing a solution for more authentic social media interactions.

Problem Space/Background  

The social media industry has reached approximately 39.7 Billion dollars of revenue in 2021, according to Grand View Research, and is continued to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 23.6% from 2022 to 2030. Despite this seemingly exponential growth, social media today has continued to brew toxicity, becoming unsafe for many users. The kind of content that has continued to find its way online is too sensationalized and is increasingly damaging healthy relationships. Most people online seek cheap popularity and attention and are no longer remorseful or sensitive about the information they put out and whomever it hurts. The urge to be the first to share information, to get the most likes, or get the most followers have made people heartless on social media, and they’ve perpetuated the spread of fake news and propaganda. Social media platforms have allowed the spread of hate speech, facilitated terrorism, and caused depression and interest, and the owners don’t seem to care about the consequences. Because of this, many people don’t feel safe anymore on social media. Some have deactivated their accounts, while the worst has happened for some; they’ve committed suicide. This toxic environment became even worse when extremist politicians in Myanmar contributed to the genocide of the Rohingya people after horrific messages were spewed online. This attention-seeking behavior has left people vulnerable to dangerous propaganda and influence campaigns. 

Although most social media platforms are free to join and use, they are not as accessible as they’re portrayed. There is a price we are all paying, and we are doing so by unknowingly giving the makers of these platforms access to troves of our data when we use their applications. Companies dealing with data are willing to pay millions of dollars to get their hands on this data mined by social media applications, and it’s being sold to the highest bidder without the owners' knowledge. The large amounts of data collected every minute from users present a new avenue for collecting more revenue. This data collection has continued to flourish because most social media users don’t understand the value of their data and are illiterate about it, so it’s become more common to expose themselves to malicious activity out of gullibility accidentally. Facts: According to McDermott, the number of people using some social media sites ranging from ages 18-24 decreased by 3 percent in 10 months. 81% of social media users feel unsafe sharing their private information.

Social media has become about money; every click or scroll you make today is an ad here, an ad there, an ad up, and another ad down. Social media is more bloated with ads, and even in the individual posts you see on social media, chances are someone is trying to sell you something whether you want it or not. Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram are all turning into marketplaces. There’s less organic content that isn’t trying to sell you something, and the makers seem to be okay with that as long as it brings in the bucks for them. The platforms have become more about quantity and commercialization than a place to connect with friends and family. “In many ways, social media died when it stopped being social and became about making money when we stopped being users and became products.” — Enrique Dans. The new generation, Gen z, however, is different. They don’t want to share everything and anything with a big group. Instead, they prefer to do everything via chat with a select group or one-to-one. And this is where we see a new trend developing. Chat communication has been around for a long time now. First, it started as text messaging, then it moved to online messaging, and now, website help chat is part of most customer-facing businesses. But even that is evolving. We are seeing more and more elements integrated into this form of communication. And it’s no longer just human to human. With the rise of Alexa and Siri, and now AI ChatGPT, the age of the bot is here. 

Gen Z does not want to be sold on social media, even more so than Millennials. They seek value, inspiration, and entertainment. In fact, they care about connections and community. As Gen Z is currently a vast audience, spanning from 10 years old to 24, identify the specific age range you are looking to target. Most active Gen Zers on social media are between 18 and 24. Such a diverse, socially-conscious generation is the driving force of community in the social space and, as such, has seen the rise of crucial differences in the way we market to Millennials and Gen Z. 

Social media is at the core of Gen Z and Millennial practices. With the rise of what is known as "positive impact marketing," using social media to showcase and vocalize what you stand for as a company has fast become one of the core content pillars of most dynamic and successful brands. While Millennials are still looking for recommendations and word of mouth as part of their decision-making process online, they also consider the brand's values more than ever before. Socially-conscious brands find massive success in today's market, both as a form of social currency and to make a statement about how they spend their money. Gen Zers are more willing to purchase if your company supports a cause. Research shows that Gen Z has been called the "socially-conscious generation." After all, 70% of Gen Zers are committed to supporting ethical companies and are more likely to engage with raw and unpolished content over sleek branding. As a clear example, Millennials are more active on Instagram (more curated in its style) while Gen Z is a TikTok generation, looking for realistic brands over staged content.

User Pain Points

https://app.freeonlinesurveys.com/1697531/analyze/-1

Using a survey about peoples general media consumption and problems, we found that 100% of all participants said they use social media for keeping in touch with friends, all participants have at one point compared themselves to other people because of social media, all participants have taken a break from social media, and 90% of all those participants benefited from taking that break.

During user interviews, we found that many participants have taken a break from social media platforms such as instagram and facebook because it takes too much time from them and has shortened their attention span to the point of where they get sucked into “doomscrolling” (scrolling on different reels non stop). And because every giant social media company has been copying tik tok’s short form videos, escaping doom scrolling and reels is almost impossible unless you delete all social media, this even includes youtube because of Youtube Shorts.

Feedback

Our research let us know the pain points of users and we were able to identify which we are able to address with the solution. The pain points are essentially maintaining and forming new friendships through social media by an organic interaction that is similar to real life, but not so much so that it becomes metaverse-esque and uncomfortable.

Solution Explanation

Based on our target users’ pain points, we knew we wanted to make sure we create features that help foster the environment where the problem can be solved, such as subscribing to communities or groups before even using the app, not having any follow counts, making sure that audio chat rooms (not a part of a community) are only up to 20 people at a time, and creating incentives for people to meet each other in person as a result of using our app.

Future Steps

Hopefully, I will launch this product to at least one university and use the KPIs as a measurement of my team's success and have this product be a great reason to have us be hired.