The Technical Reality of Building E-commerce and Social Media in One Platform

Building a social network is hard. Building an e-commerce marketplace is hard. Combining both into a single platform? Even harder. That's what João Neves and his team at Bloop discovered as they set out to create the world's first social shopping platform that rewards users for their influence.

In a recent conversation on the Levels Podcast, João, co-founder and CTO of Bloop, shared the technical realities behind building a platform that seamlessly merges social features with marketplace functionality—and why it required a team of 16 people just to get to MVP.

The Complexity of Dual Business Models

When João describes Bloop, the technical challenge becomes immediately apparent.

"Bloop is a complex project because it's both an e-commerce platform and a social network at the same time. So it's both B2B and B2C with a complex credits logic to manage all of these credit backs."

This wasn't just about building two separate systems and connecting them. Every feature had to work across multiple user types: buyers browsing socially, sellers managing inventory, and users creating content while earning credits. The platform needed to handle social feeds, product catalogs, payment processing, credit calculations, and referral tracking—all in real-time.

No Clean Separation Between Commerce and Social

Unlike platforms that bolt social features onto existing e-commerce systems, Bloop was designed from the ground up to eliminate boundaries between shopping and social interaction. João explained their design philosophy:

"I think there isn't a single screen or point of the app where it's absolutely social or absolutely commerce."

This seamless integration meant every component had to be built with dual functionality in mind. A social post isn't just content—it's also a product page. A product page isn't just a listing—it's a feed of user-generated content. The technical architecture had to support this fluidity without compromising performance or user experience.

Rethinking Traditional E-commerce UX

The technical challenges extended beyond backend systems to fundamental UX decisions. When users click on a social post about a product, they don't land on a traditional product page. Instead, João described their innovative approach:

"When you click on these posts, you go to the product page, yes, but the main product page is a feed of publications of only that product. So you not only see that post that you clicked on, But if you keep scrolling, will see posts of other people about the same product."

This required building dynamic content aggregation systems that could instantly compile and display all user-generated content for specific products while maintaining fast load times and smooth scrolling experiences.

The Team Size Reality

The complexity forced Bloop to take a different approach to early-stage hiring than most startups. While many early-stage companies focus on staying lean, João recognized they needed substantial technical capacity from the start.

"We are already a 16 person team because we need it to be able to manage all of this."

This team size reflects the reality of building in multiple domains simultaneously. They needed e-commerce specialists, social media engineers, mobile developers, backend architects, and user experience designers—all working in coordination to create a cohesive platform.

Credits System: The Technical Backbone

At the heart of Bloop's technical complexity is their credits system, which tracks and rewards user behavior across both social and commerce activities. Users earn 10% back for posting about purchases and 5% for each referral sale—calculations that must happen in real-time across a distributed system.

The credits system touches every part of the platform: purchase verification, content creation, social sharing, referral tracking, and redemption processing. This required building robust financial tracking systems with the precision of payment processing and the flexibility of social media engagement.

Integration Challenges with Sellers

Bloop also had to solve technical challenges on the seller side, supporting multiple integration methods for businesses of different technical sophistication levels. João outlined their approach:

"So if you have a Shopify store, for example, or a e-commerce store or other commerce engine, you can integrate with Bloop a couple of clicks. So it's really a simple experience and you get all the orders in the same platform you're already operating at."

This meant building APIs, webhook systems, file upload processors, and integration partnerships—all while maintaining data consistency across external systems and their own platform.

The Infrastructure Question

Perhaps most critically, the technical architecture had to be built for viral growth from day one. As João noted, network effects businesses face unique scaling challenges:

"Either you have the operational customer support, the infrastructure you need to be able to scale with that network effect virality, or you will die from success, you know, if you don't have the capital to sustain it, if you don't have a team to sustain it."

This meant over-engineering certain systems early, investing in scalable cloud infrastructure, and building monitoring and automated scaling capabilities before they were strictly necessary.

Lessons for Technical Teams

Bloop's experience offers several insights for technical teams tackling complex, multi-domain platforms:

Plan for integration complexity early: Systems that seem simple in isolation become exponentially complex when they need to work together seamlessly.

Invest in the right team size: Some technical challenges can't be solved by working harder—they require having enough specialists to handle each domain properly.

Build for scale from the start: Network effects businesses can't afford to rebuild their infrastructure when growth hits.

Design APIs as first-class citizens: Supporting multiple user types and external integrations requires treating API design as a core product feature, not an afterthought.

The technical reality of building platforms like Bloop is that the complexity compounds quickly. But as João's team has shown, with the right architecture, team composition, and technical approach, it's possible to create experiences that feel simple to users while handling enormous complexity behind the scenes.

Key Points

• Building combined e-commerce and social platforms requires specialized expertise in multiple technical domains

• Seamless integration means no clear separation between commerce and social features at the code level

• Complex credit and referral systems require financial-grade accuracy with social media-level flexibility

• Supporting multiple seller integration methods demands robust API and webhook architecture

• Team size must reflect technical complexity—Bloop needed 16 people just to reach MVP

• Infrastructure must be built for viral scaling from day one to avoid "dying from success"

• Every user interface element must serve dual purposes without compromising either function

Listen to the full conversation with João Neves on the Levels Podcast to learn more about the technical and business challenges of building innovative social commerce platforms.