From Patreon to Peloton to Match Dating Apps, activity feeds are at the core of every modern digital experience. They keep content fresh, surface relevant updates, and transform passive users into active communities.
Stream’s Activity Feeds API makes it easy to bring that same engagement engine into your app, without spending months building complex infrastructure from scratch. Developers can launch personalized, high-performance feeds in days, while scaling effortlessly to millions of users.
Today, leading apps including the companies listed above, as well as eToro, Crunchbase, AllTrails, Air Asia, Healthline, and more rely on Stream to power real-time social features, communities, and discovery experiences.
Quantifying the Impact of Feeds
To better understand how activity feeds influence user behavior, Stream surveyed 132 customers using our Activity Feeds API. The goal: measure how feeds impact user engagement, retention, and content discovery.
The Results:
- +66% average increase in user engagement
- +60% average increase in user retention
- Significant improvement in content discovery and time spent in-app
These results confirm what developers have long observed anecdotally, adding a personalized activity feed isn’t just a UX enhancement. It’s a growth driver.
Large User Engagement & Retention Increases
To learn how adding an activity feed can affect app metrics, Stream surveyed over 100 activity feeds customers, and focused on asking questions around user engagement and user retention.
After integrating the Stream Activity Feeds API, on average customers said their user engagement increased by 66%.
After integrating the Stream Activity Feeds API, on average customers said their user retention increased by 60%.
Additionally, Stream feeds customers qualitatively reported that content discovery drastically improved.
Why Feeds Work
Activity feeds turn static content into living ecosystems of interaction. Users don’t just consume content, they react, transact, comment, and discover new connections. With Stream Feeds, developers can:
- Personalize experiences using flexible ranking and filtering
- Deliver real-time updates with sub-100ms latency
- Encourage engagement through reactions, comments, and threads
- Scale globally without managing backend complexity
The result: a richer, stickier experience that keeps users exploring, engaging, and returning.
Build Engagement That Lasts
Activity feeds are more than timelines, they’re the backbone of user retention and community. With Stream, developers can integrate enterprise-grade feeds in minutes, scale to millions, and focus on what matters most: building experiences users love.