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Here’s a practical blueprint for how to make a social media

Sharp blueprint. Below is a tightened, production-minded version you can drop into a README/Notion and use as a practical checklist. I’ve added crisp

Honghao Wang

— 4 min read
Here’s a practical blueprint for how to make a social media

Sharp blueprint. Below is a tightened, production-minded version you can drop into a README/Notion and use as a practical checklist. I’ve added crisp defaults, owners, and acceptance criteria so it’s actionable from MVP through scale.

Audience & Value

  • Niche: One tightly-bounded community with a shared pain and vocabulary.
  • Personas: Creator, consumer, moderator; capture goals, fears, success signals.
  • JTBD: One-sentence job that guides every decision.
  • Differentiator: Pick exactly one lever (format, network, privacy, utility) and bias roadmap to amplify it.
    • here’s-a-practical-blueprint-for-how-to-make-a-social-media-site-that-balances-product,-engineering,-security,-and-growth.-use-it-as-a-checklist-from-mvp-to-scale. illustration 01
  • Positioning: 1-line tagline + 3 proof points users feel day one.
  • Exclusions: List what you will intentionally not build for V1.
  • Validation: 10–15 interviews and a waitlist with a specific promise and mock demo.

Content & UX

  • Post Type: Exactly one to start (text, image, short video, or links).
  • Composer: Sub-200ms open, inline preview, sensible limits (e.g., 500 chars, 10 MB images, 60s video).
    • here’s-a-practical-blueprint-for-how-to-make-a-social-media-site-that-balances-product,-engineering,-security,-and-growth.-use-it-as-a-checklist-from-mvp-to-scale. illustration 02
  • Feed: Reverse-chron “Following”; infinite scroll; lightweight cards; no ranking in V1.
  • Accessibility: Keyboard-first flows, ARIA landmarks, alt text required for images.
  • Safety (V1): File type whitelist, size caps, profanity blocklist, 429s on bursts.

Moderation & Trust

  • Guidelines: Clear rules and enforcement ladder posted publicly.
  • User Tools: Report, block, mute, keyword filters per user.
    • here’s-a-practical-blueprint-for-how-to-make-a-social-media-site-that-balances-product,-engineering,-security,-and-growth.-use-it-as-a-checklist-from-mvp-to-scale. illustration 03
  • Queues: Triage by severity (spam <1h, harassment <24h, illegal immediate escalation).
  • Safety Tech: Pluggable image scanning and URL reputation checks as growth triggers (>50 DAU reports/week).

Metrics & Targets

  • Activation: % completing onboarding + 1 post or 3 follows; target 35%+.
  • Retention: D1 25%, D7 12%, D28 6% (early benchmarks).
  • Engagement: Posts/user/week, likes/comments per post, follow rate; set weekly goals.
  • Quality: Report rate, moderation SLA, time-to-first-like/comment (TTFL/TTFC).

Core Features (V1)

  • Auth: Email + Google/Apple; verification flow; rate limit 5 attempts/hour/IP.
  • Profiles: Handle, avatar, bio, links; public by default; reserve handles.
  • Posting: Create/edit/delete with soft-deletes (30-day purge); attachments for chosen format.
  • Feed: Reverse-chron following; optional global feed later behind feature flag.
  • Social: Likes, comments, follows; basic on-site notifications; optimistic UI for lightweight actions.

Admin & Ops

  • Moderation Dashboard: Report queues with filters, assign, resolve, escalate.
  • Controls: Shadowban, temporary suspension, hard ban; reason codes required.
  • Audit: Append-only log of moderator actions with actor, target, reason, timestamp.
  • Runbooks: Incident response, abuse playbooks, rollback procedures; status page comms.

Instrumentation

  • Identity: Anonymous `device_id` pre-auth; `user_id` post-auth.
  • Events: `signup_step`, `post_create`, `follow`, `like`, `comment`, `report`, `session_start`, `feed_view`, `impression`, `click`, `dwell_ms`.
  • Schemas: Typed payloads with versioning; event dictionary in repo.
  • Alerts: Anomaly detection on spam bursts, error spikes, failed logins.

Frontend

  • Stack: `Next.js` App Router; Tailwind or Chakra.
  • State: Server Components + client hydration; SWR/React Query.
  • Perf: Image optimization, CDN, route-level caching where safe; skeletons and optimistic updates.
  • SEO: SSR for public profiles/posts; clean URLs; metadata and OG images.

Backend

  • API: Next.js Route Handlers or Fastify/Nest behind an API gateway; JSON over HTTPS.
  • DB: Postgres + Prisma. Tables: `users`, `profiles`, `posts`, `comments`, `likes`, `follows`, `notifications`, `reports`, `bans`, `sessions`.
  • Storage: S3-compatible bucket + CDN; presigned uploads; private origin.
  • Email: Postmark/SendGrid; verification, reset, digests; SPF/DKIM/DMARC set.

Security & Privacy

  • Auth: Argon2id (t=3, m=64MB, p=1) or bcrypt (cost 12+); OAuth with PKCE; session rotation.
  • Sessions: HttpOnly, Secure, SameSite=Lax cookies; 7-day TTL; device revocation.
  • AppSec: CSRF tokens, output escaping, strict CSP (`default-src 'self'`), dependency scanning, SSRF-safe fetchers.
  • Abuse: IP/device rate limits (e.g., 60 writes/hour, 600 reads/5m), CAPTCHA on risky flows, disposable-email checks.
  • Privacy: ToS/Privacy posted; age gate; delete-account flow; export readiness; minimize PII in logs; 30-day log retention.

Growth

  • Loops: Invitations, profile share cards, OG per post, link unfurls.
  • SEO: Sitemap, structured data, fast TTFB; noindex for thin pages.
  • Retention: Notification digests (weekly), nudges for TTFL/TTFC, “who to follow”.
  • Acquisition: Creator-first onboarding, featured hubs, simple referral codes.

Scale Roadmap

  • MVP (0–6 weeks): Auth, profiles, posting, feed, likes/comments, follows, notifications (basic), moderation + instrumentation.
  • PMF (6–12 weeks): Better notifications, email digests, search, improved mod tools, perf pass.
  • Growth (3–6 months): Queues for notifications, Redis cache, smarter onboarding, creator programs.
  • Scale (6–12 months): Feed ranking, hybrid fan-out, sharded Postgres, object storage lifecycle, advanced trust & safety.

Engineering Defaults

  • Feature Flags: Server-side flags for risky features; kill switches.
  • Migrations: Safe, reversible; preflight on staging with prod-size snapshot.
  • Background Jobs: Queue (e.g., BullMQ) for email, fan-out, safety scans; retries with backoff.
  • Testing: Unit for domain logic, integration for API, e2e for signup/post/like/report.
  • Cost Guardrails: Per-request budgets, media lifecycle policies, daily cost reports.

API & Data Notes

  • Endpoints: `POST /auth/*`, `GET/POST /posts`, `POST /posts/:id/like`, `POST /posts/:id/comment`, `GET /feed`, `POST /reports`.
  • IDs: Use ULIDs for ordering; include created_at indexes for feed queries.
  • Soft Deletes: Tombstones for posts/comments; purge after 30 days; cascades respected.

Acceptance Criteria (Sample)

  • Post in <2 clicks: From homepage to published with composer open <500ms.
  • TTFL < 2 minutes: 80% of new posts receive a like/comment within 2 minutes in active hours.
  • Moderation SLA: 95% spam handled <1h; 99% illegal content escalated immediately.
  • Crash-free sessions: >99.7% on stable browsers; p75 feed render <600ms.

6-Week MVP Plan

  • Week 1: Auth, profiles, DB schema, email verification.
  • Week 2: Post type + composer, S3 uploads, feed v1.
  • Week 3: Likes/comments/follows, notifications (in-app).
  • Week 4: Moderation rules + tools, reporting, audit log.
  • Week 5: Instrumentation, SEO for public pages, perf hardening.
  • Week 6: Abuse controls, runbooks, beta launch and waitlist conversion.

If you share your niche (e.g., “trail runners”) and chosen post type, I’ll tailor this into a concrete backlog with copy, defaults, and a week-by-week build plan specific to your audience and differentiator.

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