It took my cofounder and I about five years of building an alternative to Google Photos to realize that personal photos and videos are essentially social. Yes, you want to have ownership of your own pictures and videos, and even a certain personal way to access them. But to bolt on social features on top of an app that’s meant for solo usage doesn’t really work. Even Google Photos, with its network effect and market position, is still quite unsuccessful compared to WhatsApp, when it comes to photos and videos. The simple reason is that most photos and videos are something to be shared first and archived/searched second.

I’m starting to suspect that most apps are or should be social. Besides mere access, a social app allows users to interact with each other. I’m not saying that every app should look like a social network (I’m actually glad that that craze went away); but social interaction should be built from the ground app in most apps. We’re social animals, after all. If you are building a new app, I exhort you to seriously consider whether your app should be social from the ground up.

Like taste, or concern for the user, the social component of an app is something that cannot successfully be bolted upon afterwards. I’m still shocked by the implications of this thought and only hesitantly am starting to apply it to my own projects.