Making a better Social Media | Amr Shawky's Blog

Making a better Social Media

10-06-2026

Introduction

What is a ‘better’ social media? My last post on recreating old Facebook made it to the front page of Hacker News, so it’s safe to assume there’s some interest, or nostalgia, for something in the social space that perhaps existed or could exist, but doesn’t.

Like many, I love the internet but dislike modern social media. I’ve basically spent the last year obsessively wondering what I would want from an ideal social platform, how it would work, how it would make money, etc.

PicPocket.io is my attempt at this. The project is far from complete, and the UX is very much a mess. The following is a summary of development decisions I’ve made so far.

There is a blurry line between instant messaging and social apps

WhatsApp has effectively replaced Facebook in most countries, despite the former being an instant messaging app. People who dislike modern social apps are perfectly willing to delete TikTok, Instagram, etc., but not instant messaging, because this would essentially mean becoming digitally isolated from everyone you know.

In fact, I often find I’m mostly reluctant to delete Instagram not because I would miss its content, but because its messenger is a great way of staying in touch with people by sending them memes.

But if WhatsApp already does messages, why does everyone also use the separate, Instagram messenger? Two reasons:

The first is obvious; WhatsApp (despite being the same company) doesn’t allow you to view Instagram posts within the app. They need to suck you in to the content discovery to serve you ads.

The second, and what I believe to be more important, is the notification. The messaging app’s notification sound is well-known, and hearing it means it could be something important, so you’ll always look at your phone to determine the sender/content. This is why almost always, large WhatsApp groups are silenced immediately. Being sent the same notification sound for potentially important messages, as well as moderately interesting content very quickly discourages both the sender and receiver. Whereas, a distinct instagram notification can be safely ignored for later consumption.

What instant messaging does that social apps don’t

Instant messaging apps also exist as a shared space for mass photo sharing, which is a function social apps don’t do well, if at all. Even Facebook, in its desktop form, would allow the user to create an album and ’tag’ users in photos but others couldn’t contribute to it.

The typical solution to this problem is for a group to take photos together and dump them into a group chat.

Another convenience of the messaging app is that after all the photos are shared between the group, its common for people to then re-share on the same messaging app. E.g., you want to show your family some of the photos from your weekend trip with friends.

Two birds, one app

The solution (according to yours truly) is an instant messenger with both a feed and a gallery.

PicPocket.io’s chat, albums and feed interfaces

Feed

The feed acts as a way to share things with a distinct (or no) notification. Each user gets a unified feed to view things that were shared with them either directly, as part of a group, or shared with everyone.

Restricting the audience

One of the issues that plagued later-stage Facebook was that, once your family joined the platform too, you had to moderate your posts to account for this. Here, posts are scoped either by sharing with everyone you know, or by specifically selecting groups/individuals who’s feed the post appears in. Since we conveniently have the user-defined groups and 1-on-1’s from chats, this becomes very similar to how most people already share content on Instagram, and also how photos are shared on messaging apps with multiple people.

PicPocket.io’s audience restriction interface

Content discovery

This part is very tricky. Its a fine line when it comes to discovery between, “I want to give my users content” and, “We’ve become another Instagram clone.”

I should preface this by saying I’m reluctant to implement any content discovery. Of the current user-base, the feed is used 2-3 times a week on average per user, despite the lack of content discovery. Not a lot, but used nonetheless. There are however, two possible solutions I have in mind:

Solution 1: Allow the creation of public and broadcast groups, and everything remains on the same feed. Public groups would act like something in-between a subreddit and a Facebook group; topic-based, and anyone who is a member can post. This very much mirrors how large WhatsApp groups work, but moves discussions to a feed instead. Broadcast groups are like Telegram channels with the same concept applied, everything moves to the feed...