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/social-media-app-researcher

@07c8373
by Elena Chrysakielchrysaki/social-app-teardown6 stars
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Produces an exhaustive, categorized research catalog of social media apps (Threads, LinkedIn, Instagram, X/Twitter, Reddit, or others named by the user) — every feature down to granular detail (e.g. the exact reasons offered by a "report post" flow), the ranking/discovery algorithm and the retention/growth mindset behind it, a full UX/UI teardown covering every screen layout, button, and animation with the psychological/design mechanism explaining why it works, a brand & marketing kit when the request has a marketing/branding/design-system angle (color/type/spacing design tokens ready to reuse — including machine-readable JSON/CSS/Tailwind exports, not just a markdown table — brand voice, growth/acquisition funnel mechanics, copywriting patterns), and a psychology & persuasion audit when the request has a behavioral/addiction/dark-pattern angle (Cialdini's six principles, the Hook Model trigger→action→reward→investment loop, and a named dark-patterns audit against Brignull's taxonomy, each mapped to real observed features, not asserted). Use this whenever the user wants to research, catalog, benchmark, or "reverse-engineer" a social media app's features, algorithm, design, brand identity, or psychological mechanics — including requests like "study how Instagram's feed algorithm works," "make a list of every feature Reddit has," "why does the like button animation feel so good," "what makes these apps addictive," "give me X's color palette and design tokens," "how does LinkedIn's brand voice work," "what's Reddit's growth/referral loop," "what dark patterns does Instagram use," "map X's persuasion techniques to Cialdini's principles," or when building a competing social/community product and wanting a reference of what to borrow. Not for posting/scheduling/drafting content on these platforms, checking brand sentiment or mentions (that's social listening), analyzing a user's own account analytics, or building new application functionality (an animation library, a feed component, a working clone) — those are separate tasks; this skill researches how the real platforms are built and why, and its only code-shaped output is a direct, structured export of already-researched design-token values (JSON/CSS/Tailwind), not new original implementation code. For actually rewriting/optimizing a piece of content against a platform's algorithm, see the companion `platform-content-optimizer` skill instead.

  • 6 files
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Use this Skill: https://skilld.dev/gh/elchrysaki/social-app-teardown/social-media-app-researcher

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referencesfeature-taxonomy.md

≈2k tokens on demand. Your agent reads this file only when SKILL.md points to it.

Feature Taxonomy

A checklist for cataloging a social media app's features exhaustively. Work through every category below for the platform you're researching. This list is a floor, not a ceiling — platforms invent things that don't fit neatly (Reddit awards, LinkedIn "open to work" banners, X Community Notes). When you find something that doesn't fit an existing category, add a new line item rather than forcing it somewhere it doesn't belong.

For every feature you log, capture at minimum:

  • Name — what the platform calls it (their term, not a generic one)
  • Where it lives — which screen/menu/gesture surfaces it
  • What it does — the mechanics, precisely (not "lets you report a post" but the actual reason list, the flow, what happens after submission, whether the poster is notified)
  • Why it's there — the product/business/safety rationale (see ux-ui-framework.md for the psychology vocabulary to make this concrete instead of hand-wavy)

1. Account & Identity

  • Signup/onboarding flow (steps, what's required vs skippable, interest-picking for cold-start personalization)
  • Login methods, 2FA, passkeys
  • Profile fields (bio, links, pronouns, location, birthday visibility)
  • Verification badges (who qualifies, paid vs earned, visual treatment)
  • Account types (personal / business / creator / organization) and what unlocks per type
  • Multiple accounts & fast account switching
  • Profile picture / banner / theme customization

2. Content Creation

  • Composer UI (text limits, formatting options, draft autosave)
  • Media attachment types and per-type limits (image count, video length/resolution caps)
  • Alt text / image descriptions prompt
  • Tagging people, tagging products, location tagging
  • Scheduling posts, cross-posting to other platforms
  • Editing after publish (time window, "edited" indicator, edit history visibility)
  • Deleting, archiving
  • Polls, quizzes, questions stickers
  • Multi-post formats (threads, carousels, Reddit galleries)
  • Ephemeral content (stories) — posting flow, duration, who can reply/react
  • Live video/audio (Spaces, Live, Rooms)
  • Collaborative posts (co-authored, joint ownership of engagement)

3. Content Types & Formats

  • Plain text, image, video, carousel/gallery
  • Short-form vertical video (Reels/Shorts-equivalent) vs long-form
  • Link previews (how they're generated, what the poster can/can't edit)
  • Repost / quote-post / retweet mechanics (attribution, whether it can be undone quietly)
  • Long-form articles
  • Audio posts / voice notes

4. Feed, Ranking & Algorithm

  • Default feed mode (algorithmic vs chronological) and whether users can switch
  • Named ranking signals if the platform has published them (recency, predicted engagement probability, relationship strength, dwell time, negative feedback like "see less often")
  • Explore/discover page ranking vs home feed ranking — are they the same model?
  • Search ranking (recency vs relevance toggles)
  • How ads are interleaved (frequency, labeling, targeting controls exposed to the user)
  • Content demotion for borderline/low-quality content (what the platform has said publicly)
  • User-facing personalization controls (interest sliders, "not interested," topic mutes)
  • Cold-start behavior for new accounts

5. Per-Post Engagement Actions

  • Like/react — single heart vs multi-reaction picker, can reactions be seen by others
  • Comment/reply — threading model (flat vs nested), sort order options
  • Share/repost/quote — internal vs external (share sheet to other apps)
  • Save/bookmark — private collections, folders
  • Send via DM
  • Report — full reason taxonomy (the actual list of reasons offered), sub-reasons, evidence upload, whether the reporter stays anonymous, whether the reported user is notified, what happens after submission (queue, auto-action thresholds, appeal path)
  • Hide / "not interested" / "see fewer like this"
  • Mute author (temporary vs permanent, does the muted person know)
  • Block author (what breaks: DMs, tagging, visibility of old interactions)
  • Copy link, embed
  • Translate
  • View/impression count visibility (public vs author-only)
  • Pin a comment (author privilege)
  • Restrict who can reply (everyone / followers / mentioned only)

6. Social Graph

  • Follow/friend/connect model — symmetric (LinkedIn connections) vs asymmetric (Instagram follow) vs subscription (Reddit subreddit join)
  • Follow requests for private/locked accounts
  • Close friends lists / custom audience lists
  • Mutuals detection and how it's surfaced
  • Suggested accounts ("who to follow," "people you may know") — what signals drive it
  • Effects of blocking/unblocking on the graph
  • Paid subscriber tiers to a creator

7. Notifications

  • Notification types (like, comment, follow, mention, DM, algorithmic "trending near you," reminder nudges)
  • Grouping/batching logic ("Alice and 12 others liked your post")
  • Push vs in-app vs email, and granular settings per type
  • Badge count logic (does it clear on open, does it decay)

8. Messaging / DMs

  • 1:1 vs group chats, group size limits
  • Message requests (unsolicited DM filtering) and how they're surfaced
  • Read receipts, typing indicators — toggleable?
  • Disappearing/vanish messages
  • Reactions inside chat
  • Media sharing, voice messages, shared albums

9. Discovery & Search

  • Search verticals (people / posts / hashtags / topics / places)
  • Trending topics/hashtags — how "trending" is defined and localized
  • Explore grid / For You page composition
  • Hashtag or topic pages
  • Communities/groups/subreddits — creation flow, discovery, join friction

10. Moderation & Safety

  • Full report flow (see also section 5) at the platform level, not just per-post
  • Block, mute, mute keywords/words (temporary durations offered)
  • Sensitive content interstitials / content warnings, and who sets them (platform ML vs poster)
  • Appeals process for actioned content or suspended accounts
  • Author-level comment moderation tools (delete others' comments, hide comment, restrict commenters, pre-approve followers-only replies)
  • Community-level moderation (subreddit mods, group admins) and their toolset (removal reasons, automod rules, ban list, mod queue, flair control)

11. Privacy & Settings

  • Audience selectors per post (public / followers / private / custom list)
  • Story-specific privacy (hide from specific people)
  • Activity status / last seen / read receipts toggles
  • Data download/export
  • Ad preference controls exposed to the user
  • Managing blocked/muted/restricted lists

12. Monetization

  • Ad formats visible to users (feed ads, story ads, search ads) and disclosure labeling
  • Creator monetization (subscriptions, tips/gifts, bonus programs, affiliate tagging, brand partnership disclosure tools)
  • Marketplace/shop features
  • Boosting/promoting your own post (self-serve ad entry point)

13. Gamification & Retention Mechanics

  • Streaks
  • Karma/points/reputation systems (Reddit karma, LinkedIn SSI) and what they unlock
  • Badges/achievements
  • Progress indicators (profile completion meters)
  • Re-engagement notification loops ("X people posted while you were away")

14. Accessibility

  • Alt text authoring and screen-reader behavior
  • Auto-captions on video, caption styling controls
  • Font scaling / high contrast modes
  • Reduced-motion setting and which animations it disables

15. Platform-Specific Signature Features

Log anything that's genuinely unique to one platform and doesn't fit above — this is often where the "why it's successful" story lives. Examples to watch for: Reddit's karma + multireddits + awards economy, LinkedIn's endorsements/recommendations/"open to work" banner, X's Community Notes and Grok integration, Instagram's Reels remix and Close Friends green ring, Threads' lack of hashtags and its relationship to the fediverse (ActivityPub).

Source: SKILL.md on GitHub

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