A new wave of social media apps provides hope in a devastated world

Zahra Naqvi remembers the magical days of the early social Internet.

I grew up in the One Direction and Marvel fandoms in the early 2010s. That was when people posted pictures of lattes with the Valencia filter on Instagram, and Twitter was still Twitter, a place where people came together to swap jokes and cultural analysis.

But now Instagram is full of influencers, and Twitter is X, a digital town hall of fierce political division.

“The platforms that won were the ones that kept people scrolling longer, not the ones that made them feel more connected,” Naqvi told TechCrunch. “Now there is an abundance of content but a dearth of joy.”

But this is starting to change. Naqvi is part of the new wave of social media: interest-first niche online communities. This month she announced the launch of her company Lore, a site that helps fans keep up with their fandom.

She believes users increasingly want to spend less time on generic sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and instead join online communities tailored to their interests.

Natalie Dillon, consumer investor at investment firm Maveron, says she’s starting to see an increasing number of founders building interest networks first.

“At its core, consumer behavior is driving the shift from performance to engagement,” Dillon told TechCrunch. “For the next generation, community is not a feature placed on top of the product. It is the product.”

She offers examples like Beli, an app that lets users share their favorite restaurants with friends, or Fizz, which connects people who go to the same college. Other apps include Co-Star, or even Partiful, which allows people to connect with friends to plan events.

These are the kinds of participatory applications Naqvi wants to build, something like the early social web before it “got broken and depressing.”

“Niche spaces give people permission to be specific and be themselves without getting lost in the algorithm,” she said.

She added that the previous generation of social media companies achieved success through “more.” More followers, more reach, more noise. But some founders and users have now come to a different conclusion — there probably isn’t a single social media app that will become the “next big thing.” There will be several.

Maybe that’s the point.

“What we learned is that depth matters more than breadth,” Naqvi said.

Online niche communities are expanding

Of course, private groups like subreddits, Discord servers, and Facebook communities have always been around. On X, following many of the same accounts was also a way to enter a different online sphere: Think Tech Twitter or Black Twitter.

But the big sites’ algorithms curate content for users by giving the person more of what they think they want to see. Content creators are not innocent either, they feed and fuel trends, topics, discussions – anything that can spark fame and keep eyes fixed on their work.

“We have reached a saturation point,” Naqvi said. “Everyone is tired of doom and performative content.”

In other words, the days of building large, generalized sites like Facebook are over, according to Claire Wardle, an associate professor at Cornell University, who studies contemporary information ecosystems.

Users have become concerned about the amount of time they spend online, content moderation, overly political spaces, and the continuity of social media posts, Wardle said.

Of course, there are some glaring exceptions: Beijing-based TikTok, which has seen explosive growth in popularity in recent years, was briefly banned in the United States due to government concern about the scale of its potential influence. Even Facebook Threads now has over 400 million monthly active users as of this month.

But all of these have institutional roots in what has effectively become the “last generation” of social media. Wardle, in particular, described TikTok as a “streaming-style” site.

“For the rare few who like the spotlight, this works,” Maya Watson, founder of the recently shut down social media site Why?! He said. She is now working on another app undercover. “Most people didn’t sign up to be creative; we just wanted community.”

Alfonzo Terrill’s social network Spill has achieved great success by focusing on community.

The Spill became a refuge for Black X users who fled in the wake of growing extremism. Spill shifted its design from simply feeding users content to matching them with communities that might interest them, Terrell said.

For example, those who like to watch the WNBA can join a group dedicated to that. Spill also has games, like Spades — a staple in the Black community — and has partnered with Netflix, Amazon and Paramount to host co-viewing events called “Tea Parties,” where users can watch movies and sports together on the app.

“The next era of social media is not about the largest number of followers,” Terrell told TechCrunch. “It’s about depth, and helping people find the right people for them.”

Many black users also fled to Blacksky, founded by Rudy Fraser. With Blacksy, it is building an open source network on the same protocol and distribution network as Bluesky.

Bluesky’s user base is currently approaching 40 million, according to an online user tracker built using the Bluesky API. Wardle described the social network as representative of the way online communities search for content more relevant to their political interests, given Plosky’s leftist leaning.

But Blacksky takes it a step further.

It targets minorities and marginalized individuals and has an algorithm that can filter out racial harassment. Unlike X, where a user might block a racist and then see someone else, users on Blacksky can filter exactly what they want from their timelines, providing a personalized social media experience.

“Sometimes you need a global stage. And sometimes you just want a cozy corner with your closest internet friends where you can control who sees what,” Fraser told TechCrunch.

Users own their data and can decide to host such information on Blacksky rather than Bluesky, giving them control over who can access their content.

People also vote on decisions together, such as what the community guidelines should be and whether non-Black users should be allowed to post in the community, Fraser said.

“Until now, people have had to choose, unconsciously or otherwise, between the chaos of a federal system or closed platforms where they have no control,” Fraser said. (The fediverse is another network of open social web services built on a different protocol, ActivityPub.)

“With AT Protocol we are showing that you can have a great user experience, have a great time online again, and have true independence all the time,” Fraser said.

Investors are following other trends, too

Artificial intelligence plays a big role in helping build more personalized social communities.

Austin Clements, managing partner at Slauson & Co., sees founders using AI to create apps that understand nuance well, moving beyond niche social networks to personalized experiences.

“Newer apps are natively designed for the industry itself, enabling them to create tools and features that are most relevant to that industry,” he told TechCrunch. “In fact, newer apps often use widgets and call the social part ‘community.’”

Naqvi’s product includes an AI tool, though she remains mum on further details. Its product is a search engine that allows people to go down rabbit holes on the Internet. It provides an interactive experience that links to fan theories, cultural context, and Easter eggs. It builds custom graphs, reveals fan updates, and gives users monthly reports on their obsessions.

“One of our early testers said it best: ‘It’s like Wikipedia — but if Wikipedia knew exactly what I was thinking,’” she said, adding that its users call it “Mother Lore.”

Creators, like Naqvi, are now in the front seat of this new social media ecosystem, said Emily Herrera, a consumer investor who worked at Slow Ventures. She said content creators are moving away from participating in the “broadcast” ecosystem and instead building environments in which they operate as owners, citing newscasts as an example of this trend.

BITKRAFT Ventures principal Dani Tran said she’s also seeing a further rise in “niche passion communities” in gaming, giving Superbloom, a game studio targeting underrepresented audiences, as an example.

“Looking to the future, the most vibrant social communities will be those built on interactive experiences,” she said.

Dillon Maveron added to that. “The winners will be the platforms that combine intimacy, utility and creativity in one ecosystem,” she said. “It won’t look like traditional social networks; it will feel like multiplayer environments where people can build, buy and belong all at once.”

Or as Naqvi said: People “want tools that help them remember why being online was fun in the first place.”