How often should social media be updated?

Harsh Desai, staff writer

My phone buzzed and I took out my virtual significant ‘other’ only to see a software available for my social media application. I hit “update” only to plunge into a 20 second tunnel of social media isolation. Not long since I had tuned the ‘engine’ of one of my plethora of social media apps, I was asked to upgrade a couple more. This started me on the journey of discovering the reason social media applications update so frequently, and what goes on behind the scenes that makes those updates relevant.

Owing to the presence of abundant social media apps, it is imperative for the companies to induce constant growth in the services that they provide in regard to improving the overall user-experience. The moment an update is released, the application immediately gets the user’s attention and puts itself on top of users’ minds. This subsequently increases the apps usage and paves way to improve the application’s ratings and reviews on the application store.

Moreover, the release of software updates which genuinely fix the bugs in an application and enrich the user-experience catalyze the sense of reliability in the minds of the users. Such an application wins over customers much easily than anything else. This triggers a powerful mode of marketing-word of mouth, from one user to another resulting in greater number of downloads.

Releasing software updates for social media apps is a win-win for both-the users and the social media companies. However, the number of updates released depends largely on the size of the social media company. A powerhouse such as Facebook might need multiple updates in a month, as many as 4 to maintain its smooth operation while other smaller social media companies do not need such frequent improvements.