Beyond Instagram: Introducing the next generation of social apps

For years, our social media experience has been dominated by tech giants like Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp), Google (YouTube), Snapchat, TikTok, and X. But a growing number of startups are taking aim at these giants by building new, smaller, more personal social networking experiences to connect people with their friends, interests, and tighter-connected communities.

If you’re looking for a way to break away from the domination of traditional social media and big tech products in general, there are a variety of interesting alternatives. Many of them target Gen Z and younger, a group looking to build social networks in new spaces compared to those with well-established networks based on aging platforms.

Here are some of our favorites, and they’re all worth downloading.

retro

Retro is a carefully designed photo sharing app focused on building relationships with friends in a more personal format. Created by former Instagram team members Nathan Sharp and Ryan Olson, the app provides a simple way to share photos with the important people in your life as well as others that can help you reconnect with your own memories. You can select and highlight specific photos each week, save photos to albums, and use the search function to find and follow others. You’ll also have your own user profile, complete with privacy controls that let you choose which friends can see more of your photos than just your most recent month’s photos.

Retro: iOS/Android

cosmos

Are you a creative type tired of Pinterest’s AI slop? Another app, Cosmos, may offer a way out. In Cosmos, which is called a ‘space of inspiration,’ you can search by color, keyword, and image to create a profile according to your taste. You can also follow friends and other tastemakers and collaborate on collections with others. Overall, this app is a bit more sophisticated than Pinterest, and you can even use it to shop for interesting products that fit your style.

Cosmos: iOS/Android

indigo

Want to break away from X but don’t know which decentralized social network to choose – Mastodon or Bluesky? Indigo’s app solves this problem by providing a single app that can participate in both networks simultaneously. The app offers a unified timeline and a composer that lets you cross-post to both services simultaneously, a custom feed, and access to tons of personalization tools and configuration settings. The app was co-created by Ben McCarthy, who developed the Obscura app and other app suites, along with freelance iOS designer Aaron Vegh, adding a bit of polish.

Indigo: iOS only

corner

Corner calls the app “Google Maps but social,” which is an apt description. The company has a growing community of approximately 125,000 users who curate a list of their favorite places, both domestically and internationally, which they can “gatekeep” or make public for others to discover. With a definite Gen Z vibe, this isn’t just a place to find ‘good restaurants near me’, but a place to discover unique lists like those focused on the best dumplings, queer nightlife, live jazz venues, non-club dance venues, indie bookstores and anything else you want to sort, organize and recommend. The app also provides a personalized map where you can see your favorite places, places you want to visit, suggestions from others, and more. It would be like Google Maps if designed by someone in 2026.

Corner: iOS only

sacred

If you still don’t have Vine (thanks Twitter), I recommend downloading the rebooted version called Divine. Enterprising developer Evan Henshaw-Plath, an early Twitter employee, brought the Vine archives into his team’s new app. The app aims to provide a space for short-form video creators. The app hosts approximately 500,000 videos from approximately 100,000 original Vine creators and allows users to once again create their own six-second videos. Several early Vine creators have also returned to the app, including Lele Pons, JimmyHere, MightyDuck, and Jack and Jack. The project is also receiving financial support from Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey’s non-profit “and Other Stuff,” which aims to support open source social projects.

Divine: iOS/Android/Web

mesh

Although it’s not exactly a social network in the sense that it’s a platform for direct connections, Mesh is a useful tool to add to your networking app lineup. This app is like an address book on steroids in that it lets you keep track of what people on your personal, professional, and other networks are doing by tracking LinkedIn or X bio changes, posts, publications, etc. Mesh also provides tools to connect and reconnect according to the flows you configure, just like your personal CRM. Mesh, which WordPress.com owner Automattic acquired in 2025 (then known as Clay), plans to offer deeper integration with Automattic’s universal messaging app, Beeper. Please note that you must also download this app.

Mesh: iOS/Desktop/Web

fable

Book club community app Fable recently received an upgrade that’s worth a second look, even if it’s not a major book tracker. The company is now offering a bundled service with digital reading subscription provider Everand (both owned by Scribd). The service provides access to 1.5 million e-books and audiobooks from leading publishers and more. Your ratings and reviews are synced to Fable, where you can also see recommendations from others and join a virtual book club. Who do you read?

To be fair, there are so many book trackers to choose from these days that it’s hard to narrow it down. I personally like Bookshelf, Reading Journey (which has great widgets), Margins, TBR, and PageBound, but there’s so much more! There are so many different choices in this space. So why not download them all?

Fable: iOS/Android

rocket

Locket is one of the pioneers of the idea of ​​showing your friends directly on your iPhone’s home screen. The social app offers a live widget that updates when your friends upload new photos or messages, and you can respond to them through a simple chat option. You can also participate in weekly photo dumps, follow your favorite artists, and more.

Rocket: iOS/Android

air bud

Apple and Spotify have never really built a social network around music, but Airbuds seems to have done it. The app is a social network that lets you share the content you’re streaming with your friends and then offers a variety of other features based on that functionality. You can use emojis, stickers, or selfies to react to your friends’ music choices, play clips of songs your friends recently streamed, send messages to your friends, configure your profile with your favorite bands, participate in music-related activities like music quizzes, learn about music styles, or find friends with similar musical tastes.

Airbuds: iOS/Android

the mall

The newly launched app The Mall turns online shopping into a social experience. The app provides a universal feed for updates and new arrivals from your favorite brands (mostly fashion). But you can also add other brands that have online e-commerce stores. You can also visit your friends’ profiles to see what kinds of items they have in their collections and “malls,” and get inspiration and recommendations for other brands you might like based on your taste and style.

The Mall: iOS (waiting list)

shelf

The core idea of ​​Shelf is to provide a way to organize your tastes, meaning music, movies, TV shows, books, and other areas of interest. This allows Shelf to help you learn more about yourself, get personalized summaries, dive into trend analysis, and more. But there’s a social element at play here too, as you can explore your friends’ bookshelf as a source of discovery and inspiration. And unlike traditional social media, Shelf is private by default because it’s not about gaining influence. It’s about maintaining your own digital life, interests, and friends’ history.

Shelf: iOS