Pulse. Social Network With Prizes

Pulse aimed to create a social network that strengthens local communities and drives foot traffic to nearby stores. Traditional loyalty programs are often fragmented and not very engaging. The goal was to combine social interaction, gamification, and local rewards into a single platform that benefits both users and small businesses.

The team’s goals were to:

• Allow users to earn prizes and discounts from local stores through their social activity.
• Offer merchants a digital platform to engage customers nearby.
• Facilitate real-time challenges, campaigns, and reward distribution.
• Establish a scalable foundation for expansion across multiple cities and countries.

Pulse needed a technology partner to develop a high-capacity consumer platform that supports real-time interactions and incentives. Pharos Production had extensive experience building scalable backend systems, event-driven architectures, and consumer-facing products. This expertise enabled them to deliver a reliable platform ready for rapid growth in the region.

The backend is built on Java and Spring Boot, providing a reliable foundation for APIs, user activity tracking, and reward logic. We use Apache Kafka to stream events such as user actions, campaign participation, and prize claims. Apache Flink processes these events in real time, enabling instantaneous updates on user progress and reward availability.

Pulse offers a modern, mobile-friendly interface built with React and NextJS. Users can discover nearby offers, participate in challenges, and track rewards through an intuitive feed optimized for everyday use.

Apache Cassandra stores user profiles, merchant data, and engagement history at scale. Apache Pinot powers real-time analytics dashboards that provide insights into campaign performance and user activity. Redis is used for low-latency caching of active challenges and rewards. The platform runs on Kubernetes with Istio for traffic management and is deployed on AWS to ensure high availability and elasticity.

Users can earn points, prizes, or discounts by engaging with content, completing challenges, or visiting partner stores. Rewards are tied directly to local businesses.

Local businesses create campaigns, set prize rules, and monitor engagement through dedicated dashboards. This enables them to attract and retain nearby customers effectively.

All user actions and reward updates are processed in real time, ensuring transparency and instant feedback within the app.

Pulse establishes a direct link between communities and merchants, transforming social interactions into measurable local impact.

The platform offers local stores a simple, data-driven way to promote offers and build customer loyalty without requiring complex infrastructure.

Pulse’s cloud-native, event-driven architecture enables swift onboarding of new cities, merchants, and users while ensuring consistent performance.