I'm thrilled to share with you Unspoken, a social app that features an intriguing question daily that encourages users to share their thoughts, personal stories, and true selves. By doing so, it helps people reveal a more authentic/interesting side of them, as well as find common ground with others. It's available for free here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/unspoken-fun-daily-questions/i...
While the concept is as simple as it gets, I think it truly stands out from other popular social apps. Here’s why:
1. Unlike most of its competitors (if not all), Unspoken is text-only. This gives people a break from visually-overwhelming social apps, and attracts those looking for less superficial, more meaningful interactions. Plus, answering a question is easy and feels more approachable than curating the perfect photo, removing some of the friction behind posting.
2. It has an excellent balance of app-generated content (questions) and user-generated content (answers). This allows it to be flexible and improve the questions over time depending on what resonates more with the community, leading to better engagement and retention.
3. People don’t know what tomorrow’s question will be, making the answers more spontaneous, authentic and less curated. This removes the pressure of “planning” the perfect post, which is incredibly refreshing. And, the intrigue of what question comes next adds an exciting element of surprise.
4. The daily questions are the perfect way to intrigue people and remind them to come back daily, fostering that habit of using the app daily without feeling pushy.
5. People love talking about themselves, but nobody wants to look or feel self-absorbed. Unspoken is the perfect space for everyone to comfortably share cool stuff about themselves without giving off the wrong vibe. It feels natural – everyone is doing it :)
6. The app encourages people to share ideas and anecdotes about topics that are universally relatable and inherently interesting, yet rarely talked about. That’s why it’s called Unspoken. The idea that most of the content has never been shared before elsewhere is exciting to both the readers and the writers of the answers.
7. Questions and answers are easy to share in an easily digestible (yet visually catchy) format, helping with the app’s visibility and potentially attracting users from other social apps. And due to the nature of the content, lots of it has high viral potential.
8. In addition to comments, people get to add reacts to answers. Those with a high number of reacts are considered to be valuable, so they make it to the top of the feed (similar to Reddit). That way, the community itself curates the experience, helping bring the most interesting/valuable content to the eyes of more users.
9. People can shape their experience in any way they want to: from browsing top content and following celebrities for a more personal look into their lives, to bonding privately with friends or even using Unspoken as their personal journal, with a helpful prompt each day for self-reflection. This attracts people who use social media for both the public and the private side of things.
As my first solo project, this has been an awesome experience. While its currently small user base is highly engaged, getting more users has been the biggest challenge. So I’m open to suggestions! What strategies or features have you found effective in scaling your projects? Any and all feedback on how to attract new users, refine the app experience, or simply spread the word about Unspoken would be immensely valuable.
I really appreciate the time you dedicated to reading this long post. Hope you enjoy Unspoken, and happy to answer any questions you might have :)