Nonsocial apps with a social community inside of them. It seems to make sense since you already have a captive audience. However, does it always make sense? Let’s first dive into mobile apps that come with communities.

Besides the obvious social mobile apps, there are multiple apps with communities aka groups inside of them. These apps are not primarily social apps, but they attempt to support a community. Since humans are social beings, it can be a nice feature which can make the app more appealing and thus used more often.

Some Community Supporting Apps:

• Argus – It’s a highly social activity tracker app that has a groups section. There’s more on Argus further down in this article. iPhone and Android apps exist.
• Coursera has a “Discussions” area in the iPhone app. There’s an Android app too. Discussions are not available until a course starts. So, one cannot peek inside right away and explore it.
• Lose It! – Weight Loss Program and Calorie Counter – Has a “Social” section with many groups in it. The group activity in it is kind of strong. Strongest are the groups which are promoted as “Featured Groups”. iPhone app and Android app exist.
• Not quite a discussions area, but Udemy has a Q & A section which has questions directed at the instructor in a particular instructor. This provides longterm value with credibility in the information since the answers come from the instructor. However, there is no sense of community. They offer an iPhone app and an Android app.
• It’s worth noting that I have seen apps drop support for groups. That can sometimes be the smartest move.

More on Argus

The target audience of the app focuses on people who like to be social while tracking health, fitness, meditation, sleep and other trackable activities. Even though the semi-new groups section is pretty dead, there’s a novel tie in from a group into the tracked activities of group members which I find interesting.

It’s interesting in how it provides a kind of newsfeed style of tracked activities. You can tap on a button in the group and see a combined newsfeed from the group members. Compared to the messages button, this has much more activity. Unfortunately, most of the activities have nothing to do with the particular group you are in since they are not filtered. At a glance, it’s also a slightly confusing user experience.

Also, the downside of the groups section is that it’s slow to load and has an annoying bug which makes the iPhone app crash when you click on a link. As a side note, I happen to run a meditation group in Argus that has 25 members.

All that said, it’s worth a look. The groups has potential if a few things are tweaked, promoted, and fixed.

Externally Support the Community?

Should one just tie into an existing social app such as Facebook to support a community? It’s a fair question. Facebook has a groups feature which can be successful. The most successful Facebook group I have been a part of is the Octalysis Explorers. It has over 2000 members. Like any group, a lot of effort goes into keeping the community engaged. Fortunately for the Octalysis Explorers, Yu-kai Chou is a master at the art and science of engagement. He has a handful of awesome and loyal people who support the effort.

The people supporting the Octalysis Explorers group are continuously driving people to the Facebook group through multiple channels. Even in its own “Join the Movement” section, the group is highlighted in Yu-kai Chou’s great book titled Actionable Gamification – Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards. There are also multiple administrators for the group. Also, there is always at least one person actively interacting with every post. A successful community relies on that kind of wonderful support from its administrators and its members.

Summary

Even though the implementation and user experience is pretty rough, it seems like the app with the most group activity without overt support is “Lose It!” However, that’s not saying much. The app with the most potential from a technology point of view may be Argus. However, Argus is already a highly social app so its group feature doesn’t add much.

If one can dedicate people to supporting a community on Facebook, that might be your best bet. If you go that route, you will need to continuously drive people to the group through your existing email marketing, verbal announcements in events or podcasts, and every other chance you get. Communities require care and feeding.

No matter how you support a community experience, it can provide an advantage over other solutions who don’t provide such. If one cannot dedicate the resources to the community experience or if the community experience doesn’t ever pay off, my advice is to drop it and refocus on other things.