What a world we live in. Not too long ago, all cellphones could do was make calls, send out a few lines of text, and play simple, monochromatic games like Snake (though, let’s be honest – no mobile game has ever been better). Then, in 2007, came Apple's iPhone – this weird, newfangled device that many people initially scoffed at – and the entire mobile industry has never been the same. Thanks to the popularity of the iPhone, countless companies followed suit and soon rode the touchscreen smartphone wave, which pushed what Apple was initially going for into several bold, new directions.  Nowadays, people are more connected than ever. The proliferation of smartphones with advanced mobile internet capabilities has made sure of that. And with the ability to easily and quickly download countless social apps with tons of rich media features, getting in touch with friends, family or colleagues has become more than just typing out simple messages.  You can share photos, videos, life events, play games with friends, chat in real time, engage in video calls, and so much more. With a plethora of powerful social features already at any mobile device owner's disposal, one has to wonder: has the envelope been pushed as far as technologically possible? Where is all this headed?

The Community Add-On is the third big release of the User project we started last spring. Don’t wait too long to activate it and start creating connections between your users!

GoodBarber has born like a powerful and beautiful CMS system to create native applications. The app market grows every day faster and GoodBarber does it as well. Delivering good content is not enough anymore, you need people interacting with it, spreading your words... Feeling yourself attached to an app is very difficult, but the probability of becoming faithful can increase if the user can have a special and dedicated place for him self inside the app. And so here we are... Less then one month ago I've presented to you the new and very awaited in-app login feature, that enables the app users to create their own profile, with photo and details, and to the app's owner to restrict the app access to the only registered users.  That was our first step into the social apps world and today I'm here to present you the second one. :)

Be it a real or virtual, it's not easy to create a community! It takes time and a lot of dedication... When it comes to apps in particular, a strong sense of community among users is necessary, but also focusing on the right kind of features to make your app social. But before telling you how to achieve this goal, let's focus on the meaning of community, and why it's so important.

Your GoodBarber app embeds social sharing features that will help your users to spread the word about your content. It means that almost everywhere in the app, your readers have access to a "share" button that will lead them the sharing screen.   You've probably already added such features to your website: you can easily understand that the more the process will be easy for your users to share your posts or videos, the more they'll share it :)   Since the GoodBarber 2.5 Salvador release, we've also integrated Facebook likes into the apps. It means that once your reader is logged in your app with his Facebook account, he'll just have to click on the "heart" button to like the post he's reading. It's not exactly the same action than a real Facebook share: a share will create a new post in the user's timeline, and a like will just appear in the Facebook ticker feed.   To be honnest, as a Facebook user, I prefer most of the times to just "like" a blog post than to actually "share" it to my friends: the two actions are totally different and apply in different situations.   GoodBarber also allows you to ask your users to login using Facebook or Twitter to post a comment, to bookmark a content, or to submit a picture/video/text from a Submit section. You should enable this feature if you don't want the comments on your website to be anonymous.