About

Why I Started ContactsManager

Building applications that help people has been my only passion for over a decade now. Throughout my career at companies like Facebook and Google, working on products like Facebook, Android Messages, Google Maps, and Google Duo, I witnessed firsthand the power of well designed applications — and the challenges of building truly engaging social products.

My journey also took me through startups like Beepi, the online car sales company that, despite its business challenges, created one of the most engaging platforms I've ever built. Users spent an average of 35 minutes per day on the platform, with more than 4 sessions per week — metrics that many social networks would envy.

At Sunshine Contacts and later at SLIK (sliksafe.com), I continued to explore the intersection of personal data, privacy, and social connections. One pattern became increasingly clear: the most successful social applications understand that true engagement comes from genuine connections and value to users, not algorithms.

That's why I built ContactsManager — to give application developers the tools to create authentic social experiences while maintaining the highest standards of privacy and security. The SDK ensures that contact information stays with users only, not even the company implementing the SDK has access to users' personal contacts, effectively preventing spam and data misuse. This doesn't mean developers have fewer features at their disposal — they can still build all the engaging experiences that platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and LinkedIn offer, but without the ethical concerns and negative publicity that often come from practices that compromise user privacy and trust.

"Developers now have unprecedented power — the ability to build engaging social experiences with the highest standards of privacy and security. Create authentic social experiences without compromising user trust."

The College Campus Effect: The Math Behind Viral Growth

One of the most fascinating aspects of social application growth is virality. The premise is beautifully simple yet powerful: each user just has to invite just one more user, for the app to grow exponentially.

Now, for an app we love or pay for, the probability that we'll recommend it to a good friend is extremely high. Specially, when we're in a college environment, because we're surrounded by a lot of people, and have far more social opportunities.

What makes these recommendations so powerful is their conversion rate. A person who learns about a product from a trusted friend is 5-7x more likely to try it than someone who discovers it through an online ad or learns about it online. This trust factor dramatically reduces acquisition costs while improving user quality.

Where the ContactsManager Shines:

ContactsManager stands out by enabling developers to harness the power of social connections from users' existing phonebook while maintaining absolute privacy. Our SDK provides a unique framework where users' contact information remains exclusively on their devices, hashed and encrypted.

Unlike previous attempts, which centralize user data, or share users' contacts with advertisers, ContactsManager operates with Privacy by Design, by hashing and encrypting users' contacts.

Here's how it works:

First, most people maintain active communication with roughly 5-50 individuals at any given time, including friends, family, and colleagues. This number varies based on age, location, lifestyle, and other factors, but represents a significant network of potential connections.

Second, decades of research on social networks, including studies by Facebook, have consistently shown that any two people worldwide are approximately six connections apart from each other. In closer communities, defined by location, profession, or interests, people are typically only 2-3 degrees of separation away.

ContactsManager leverages these existing social structures to surface contacts from the user's phonebook. Here are three examples:

1. Which of a user's contacts are already using your app
2. A new user, who might be known by multiple currently active users
3. People a user could invite from their phonebook, who are known by multiple active users

Simply put, viral growth can be visualized as an exponential journey:

As you can see, starting with just 500 users, apps could reach over 16,000 users in just 5 weeks. This is the power of viral growth that made products like Google Search, Facebook, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, and others explode from small campus projects to global phenomena.

With ContactsManager, we're giving developers the tools to tap into this same powerful growth engine while ensuring the privacy and security that your users deserve.

Activate the Viral Engine for Your App

I believe the next generation of social applications will be built on a foundation of trust, privacy, and genuine connection. If you're developing an app that could benefit from social features, I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to schedule a demo with me below:

Follow me on @arpwal for updates on ContactsManager and insights on building privacy-first social experiences.

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