Zehra Naqvi recalls the magical days of the early social internet.
She grew up in the One Direction and Marvel fandoms in the early 2010s. This was back when people posted photos of lattes using the Valencia filter on Instagram, and Twitter was still Twitter, a place where people came together to exchange jokes and cultural analysis.
But now Instagram is full of influencers, and Twitter is X, a digital town hall with a fierce political divide.
“The platforms that won were the ones that kept people scrolling the longest, not the ones that made them feel the most connected,” Naqvi told TechCrunch. “Now there is an abundance of content but a scarcity of joy.”
But that is starting to change. Naqvi is part of the new wave of social media: interest-first, niche online communities. This month, she announced the launch of her company, Lore — a site that helps fans keep up with their fandoms.
Users increasingly want to spend less time on generalized sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and instead join online communities tailored to their interests, she believes.
Natalie Dillon, a consumer investor at venture firm Maveron, says she’s starting to see an increasing number of founders build interest-first networks.
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“At its core, consumer behavior is pushing a shift from performance to participation,” Dillon told TechCrunch. “For the next generation, community isn’t a feature layered on top of a product. It is the product.”
She offers examples like Beli, an app that lets users share their favorite restaurants with friends, or Fizz, which connects people going to the same college. Others include the astrology-bonding app Co-Star, or even Partiful, which lets people connect with friends to plan events.
These are the types of participatory apps that Naqvi wants to build — something resembling the early social internet before it “became fractured and joyless.”
“Niche spaces give people permission to be specific and to show up as their whole selves without being lost in the algorithm,” she said.
The previous generation of social media companies found success through “more,” she continued; more followers, more reach, more noise. But some founders and users are now coming to a different conclusion — maybe there isn’t one social media app that will become “the next big thing. ” There will be several.
Maybe that’s the point.
“What we have learned is that depth matters more than breadth,” Naqvi said.
Niche online communities are expanding
Of course, private groups like subreddits, Discord servers, and Facebook communities have always existed. On X, following many of the same accounts was also a way to enter a different online sphere: Think Tech Twitter or Black Twitter.
But large sites’ algorithms curate content for users by giving a person more of what they think they want to see. Content creators are not innocent either, feeding and fueling trends, topics, and discussions — anything that could spark fame and keep steady eyeballs on their work.
“We hit a saturation point,” Naqvi said. “Everyone is tired of doomscrolling and performative content.”
In other words, the days of building large, generalized sites like Facebook are over, according to Claire Wardle, an associate professor at Cornell University, who studies contemporary information ecosystems.
Wardle said users have grown worried about how much time they are spending online, content moderation, hyper-political spaces, and the permanence of social media posts.
Naturally, there are a few glaring exceptions: Beijing-based TikTok, which has seen massive growth in popularity in recent years, was briefly outlawed in the U.S. as the government worried over the scale of its potential influence. Even Facebook’s Threads now has over 400 million active monthly users as of this month.
But all of these have founding roots in what has already become the “last generation” of social media. Wardle, in particular, called TikTok a “broadcast-style” site.
“For the rare few who love the spotlight, that works,” Maya Watson, founder of the recently shuttered social media website Why?! said. She is now working on another app in stealth. “Most people didn’t sign up to be creators; we just wanted community.”
Alphonzo Terrell’s social network Spill has found much success by focusing on community.
Spill became a refuge for Black X users who fled in the wake of rising extremism. Terrell said Spill shifted its design from simply feeding users content to matching them with communities that might be of interest to them.
For example, those who like watching the WNBA can join a group specifically for that. Spill also has games, like Spades — a staple in the Black community — and has partnered with Netflix, Amazon, and Paramount to host co-viewing events called “Tea Parties,” in which users can watch movies and sports together on the app.
“The next era of social media isn’t about the biggest follower counts,” Terrell told TechCrunch. “It’s about depth; helping people find their people.”
Many Black users also fled to Blacksky, founded by Rudy Fraser. With Blacksy, he’s building an open-sourced network on the same protocol and distribution network as Bluesky.
Bluesky’s user base is currently nearing 40 million, according to an online user tracker built with the Bluesky API. Wardle called the social network a representative of how online communities are seeking out content more tailored to their political interests, given Bluesky’s left-wing bent.
But Blacksky takes it one step further.
It targets minorities and marginalized individuals and has an algorithm that can filter out racial harassment. Unlike X, where a user might block one racist person and then see another, users on Blacksky can completely filter out whatever they want from their timelines, providing a custom social media experience.
“Sometimes you need a global stage. Sometimes you just want a cozy corner with close internet friends where you can control who sees what,” Fraser told TechCrunch.
Users own their data and can decide to host such information on Blacksky rather than Bluesky, giving them control over who has access to their content.
People also vote on decisions together, Fraser said, such as what the community guidelines should be and if non-Black users should be allowed to post in the community.
“Until now, folks have had to make the choice, unconsciously or otherwise, between the jankiness of the fediverse or closed platforms where they have no control,” Fraser said. (The fediverse is another network of open social web services built on a different protocol, ActivityPub.)
“We’re demonstrating with AT Protocol that you can have a great user experience, have a good time again on the internet, and have real autonomy the entire time,” Fraser said.
Investors are following other trends, too
Artificial intelligence is playing a big part in helping build more niche social communities.
Austin Clements, a managing partner at the firm Slauson & Co., is seeing founders use AI to build apps that understand nuance so well, they go beyond niche social networks into tailored experiences.
“The newer apps are natively built for the niche itself, enabling them to create the tools and features most relevant to that niche,” he told TechCrunch. “In fact, newer applications typically lead with the tools and call the social part ‘community.’”
Naqvi’s product has an AI tool, though she remains mum on further details. Her product is a search engine that lets people go down internet rabbit holes. It provides an interactive experience, linking to fan theories, cultural context, and easter eggs; it builds personalized graphs, reveals fandom updates, and gives users monthly reports on their obsessions.
“One of our early testers said it best: ‘It’s like Wikipedia — but if Wikipedia knew exactly what I was thinking,’” she said, adding that her users call her “Mother Lore.”
Emily Herrera, a consumer investor who worked at Slow Ventures, said that creators, like Naqvi, are now in the front seat of this new social media ecosystem. Creators are moving away from participating in the “broadcast” ecosystem to instead building environments in which they operate as owners, she said, citing newsletters as an example of this trend.
Dani Tran, a principal at BITKRAFT Ventures, said she’s also seeing the further rise of “niche passion communities” in gaming, giving Superbloom, a gaming studio that targets underrepresented audiences, as an example.
“Looking ahead, the most vibrant social communities will be those built around interactive experiences,” she said.
Maveron’s Dillon added to that. “The winners will be the platforms that combine intimacy, utility, and creativity in one ecosystem,” she said. “They won’t look like traditional social networks; they’ll feel like multiplayer environments where people can build, buy, and belong all at once.”
Or, as Naqvi put it: People “want tools that help them remember why being online was fun in the first place.”
