Understanding Why Friendship Is Becoming the Next Big Social App Category
Why Friendship Is Becoming the Next Big Social App Category — by Vasili Nikolaev, founder of Bfriendz App
For years, social technology was built around attention: bigger networks, longer sessions and more messages. That made sense when the internet’s main job was helping us find one another.
The problem has changed. People are not short of contacts or group chats. They are short of someone nearby who is free on Friday
That gap explains why friendship apps, run clubs, supper clubs and phone-free events are receiving so much attention. It is not a rejection of technology, but a demand for technology that leads somewhere.
The old infrastructure of friendship is weaker
Adult friendships once grew almost accidentally through school, university, offices and local pubs. These places created repeated contact without anyone organising it.
Today, people move cities, work hybrid schedules and manage friendships across complicated diaries. Many third places have closed or become too expensive for regular use. Social media keeps relationships visible, but visibility is not time together.
People can know plenty of people and still have no weekend plan.
Eventbrite’s 2026 Social Study calls the response a “Reset to Real”. It found that 79% of 18-to-35-year-olds want to go to more events, while 58% would rather meet people somewhere socialising isn’t the whole point. Many people want company, but do not want to enter a room and announce that they are there to make friends.
Activities make meeting people feel normal
A run, exhibition, market or coffee gives two strangers an immediate reason to be in the same place. There is something to discuss, a natural beginning and an obvious ending. The meeting carries less pressure because conversation is not the only activity.
This is how friendships usually develop anyway: not through one perfect compatibility test, but through repeated ordinary experiences. Activity-led socialising simply creates the first one.
It also replaces vague compatibility with useful intent. “Likes live music” is information. “Looking for someone to see this band in Manchester on Friday” is a possible plan, complete with an activity, place and time.
Why we built Bfriendz around invitations
We did not start Bfriendz because people needed another catalogue of profiles. We kept seeing the same smaller, more practical problem: somebody wanted to try a new place, visit an exhibition or go to a gig, but their existing friends were busy.
Most social discovery products introduce two people and then leave them in an open-ended chat. We wanted the invitation to come first. On a social app built around making friends through real plans, “coffee on Saturday?” is more useful than another match with no obvious next step.
We also did not want every new connection defined before people met. In our early UK data, 24% of users selected Friendship and another 27% chose Let’s See; 69% were aged 18–30. That suggests younger users are comfortable meeting first and allowing the relationship to find its own shape.
The next social products will solve coordination
The opportunity is larger than matching. Useful friendship technology must handle local discovery, availability, commitment, safety and the awkwardness of making the first move. It should make changing a time or declining an invitation easy without turning everything into another prolonged conversation.
Sometimes the barrier is simply language. “We should hang out sometime” requires somebody to start again later. Practical advice on how to ask a new friend to hang out works because a specific invitation can receive a specific answer.
Success should therefore mean plans proposed, plans completed and second plans made, not minutes spent scrolling. The popularity of friendship apps reflects a wider change in what people expect from social technology: less digital possibility, more participation in real life.
Staying current on Why Friendship Is Becoming the Next Big Social App Category helps teams prioritize the next move with clearer context.
