What is a social networking site?

If you've updated your Facebook status, posted photos of last night's party to Flickr for your friends to see or made a business contact through LinkedIn, then you've used a social networking site. But what exactly is a social networking site? What are the key attributes that set it apart from other Web sites? How do they allow people to form online communities and share social networking information? Some of the earliest sites that we would recognize as being similar to today's social networking sites appeared in the mid 1990s, when the Internet started growing in popularity. These early sites focused on letting users reconnect with people they had known in the past, or finding out how they were connected to other site users. Friendster appeared in 2002 and followed a similar model, but it offered additional features like photo sharing and it quickly became the first of the "big" social networking sites. Since then, however, Friendster has declined in popularity and is no longer one of the top 20 social networking sites in the United States [source: Hitwise]. After Friendster came MySpace and Facebook, along with sites like Bebo, Hi5, Orkut and Yahoo! 360. In addition, dozens of sites catering to very specific regions or tastes have sprung up. Whether you're interested in books, video games, music or meeting people from Denmark, there's probably a social networking site for you.
he idea of an online community goes back much farther than the 1990s, however. Very early forms of the Internet were used to foster social networks. The earliest online communities were dial-up bulletinboard systems (BBSes) such as The Well and numerous other regional systems. While these early communities did not have the features users have come to expect of modern social networking sites, they shared the core idea of connecting people with common interests.

What Social Networking Sites Do

The line between what is and isn't a social networking site isn't always a clear one. Internet message boards, for instance, facilitate the creation of online communities, but they typically don't have the robust "friends list" features of a true social networking site. Some sites don't have social networking as their primary goal, but accomplish that function. Last.fm, for instance, is a way for users to track their music listening habits, rate songs and create their own custom stations of streaming music to listen to. Because users can also compare their tastes to those of other users, and create profiles and friends lists, it also acts as a social networking site. There are two things that a website must have to be defined as a social networking site: 1). The ability for users to create their own personal profile pages, containing whatever information they want to share about themselves. 2). The ability for users to link to each other and create a list of "friends" or "contacts" who can view each other's profiles and share social networking information.

Many social networking sites offer capabilities far beyond the basics, often based on the specific type of networking the site caters to. For example, a business networking site might allow users to post resumes or references. A photo sharing site would most likely have advanced image galleries built in, plus ways to rate or discuss other people's photos. A music-focused site could allow users to automatically upload lists of songs they listen to on their media players. New applications are expanding the capabilities of social networking sites every day, giving us more opportunities to interact with them (and, some might argue, fewer opportunities to get away from them). Why are some sites more popular than others, and why do some sites fade in popularity after a while? Anyone who can give you a definite answer to that question is well on the way to becoming a millionaire. Actually, site popularity is defined by many complex factors. It also varies among different populations -- some sites are more popular with younger users, while some that are not well-known in the United States are popular in other countries. Sometimes a fade in popularity can be attributed to a new site with more or more useful features. Sometimes it revolves around social networks themselves. For instance, a single user or group of users with a lot of connections can make a switch to a new site and bring all their contacts with them. Since every "friend" has his or her own friends, the ripple effect can eventually become enormous. For example, while Friendster has experienced a decline in American users, it has become enormously popular in the Philippines. Friendster traced the shift to one west coast American user who had many contacts in the Philippines [source: Woodard Maderazo]. For more information on social networking and related topics, take a look at the links on the next page.
Sources

Hitwise. "Top 20 Social Networking Websites." Hitwise Datacenter. (June 15, 2009) http://www.hitwise.com/datacenter/main/ Luo, John S., M.D. "Social Networking: Now Professionally Ready." Primary Psychology. Vol. 111, issue 2, 2007. http://www.primarypsychiatry.com/aspx/articledetail.aspx?articleid=975 Maderazo, Jennifer Woodward. "Orkut, Friendster Get Second Chance Overseas." MediaShift. June 15, 2007. (June 7, 2009) http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/06/orkut-friendster-get-second-chanceoverseas166.html Roxborough, Scott and Masters, Charles. "Social Nets Engage in Global Struggle." Adweek, Oct. 5, 2007. (June 10, 2009) http://www.adweek.com/aw/national/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=10 03653287 Suddath, Claire. "The Downside of Friends: Facebook's Hacking Problem." Time. May 5, 2009. (June 9, 2009) http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1895740,00.html

How Networking Works

Inside this Article 1. Introduction to How Social Networks Work 2. Social Networks Provide Connections 3. Social Network as a Circle of Ties 4. 5. 6. 7. Technology and Social Networks Setting up Social Networking Accounts Finding and Making Connections See more 7. Making Online Connections 8. What Social-networking Sites Do 9. Social Networks as Bridges 10. Lots More Information 11. See all Conferencing articles

1. Social networks are the relationships that tie us together. Think about what happens when you meet someone new. You ask where they work, where they grew up, where they went to school. Eventually, you realize that your childhood friend was in this guy's fraternity in college. Even though you've never met before, you're both part of the same social network -- a friend of a friend.

the term "social network" has been around since the 1950s, but the meteoric rise of social-networking Web sites like MySpace, Facebook and Linkedin has turned a dusty sociological phrase into the hottest buzzword of the Internet age. A social network is a social structure that maps out the relationships between individuals. Technically we all belong to one giant social network, but we also belong to smaller, tighter social networks defined by our families, our friends, where we live, where we work, where we went to school, our hobbies and interests and much more.

Social Networks History

In the early 1930s, a self-published psychologist named Dr. Jacob Levi Moreno introduced the sociogram, the first formal attempt to map out the relationships within a group of people. Moreno's sociogram -- a cluster of individual points, or "nodes," connected by straight lines -- became a powerful tool for identifying social leaders, outsiders, and what he called the "sociometric star," the person to whom all others are connected [source: Psybernet]. In 1954, anthropologist J. A. Barnes used the phrase "social network" to describe the complex relationships in a Norwegian fishing village [source: The Bumble Bee].

If you sat down with a pen and paper, it would be difficult to map out all the people with whom you're connected and all the people with whom they're connected. That's why social-networking Web sites are so powerful.

Social-networking sites "make invisible social networks visible" by allowing us to see (with pictures and links) who our friends are, who our friends' friends are, and who our friends' friends' friends are -- all in an easy-to-use interface [source: Wireless Jobs.com]. When you create a profile on a social-networking site, you literally put yourself on the socialnetworking map. You can use the Web site to:

look up old friends; make new ones share music, photos and videos join groups based on interests such as politics, hobbies or favorite TV shows find jobs or love; or browse for the weirdest profile picture

How popular are social-networking sites? According to ComScore, MySpace drew more than 114 million visitors ages 15 and older in June 2007, a 72 percent increase over June 2006. Facebook jumped 270 percent in the same year, up to 52 million visitors a month. According to Alexa, seven of the top 20 most visited Web sites in the world are socialnetworking sites, such as MySpace or Friendster, or contain significant social-networking components like YouTube or Hi5. But as social-networking sites go mainstream, the demographics are shifting. By August 2006, more than two-thirds of MySpace visitors were over 25 years old, with more than 40 percent between the ages of 35 and 54. Now that non-university students can sign up for Facebook accounts, more than half of that site's members are out of college. [source: ComScore] This isn't just a U.S. phenomenon. Social-networking sites have gone global. In June 2007, Google's Orkut drew 49 percent of its visitors from Latin America (mostly Brazil) and 43 percent from the Asia-Pacific region. In that same month, a full 89 percent of visitors to Friendster were from the Asia-Pacific region and 63 percent of visitors to Bebo were from Europe [source: ComScore]. In this HowStuffWorks article, we're going to explain how social networks work, how technology aids in forming and maintaining social networks, and how Web sites take social networks to the next level and beyond.

Starting a Social Networking Website from Scratch

Youve seen MySpace, you've heard of Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and all the other ones. What do these websites share? They are very popular social networks. Would you like to give it a shot also? In that case, this article will point you in the correct direction. What do you want to achieve by building a social networking website? Think about this thoroughly. It is crucial that you comprehend your ambitions early on so you can avoid getting frustrated later. There are usually a couple of options:

- you are starting a social networking site for a real physical community you are a member of (e.g. your local soccerclub), with no financial ambitions. - you are starting a niche community website for a group of people that you are perhaps a member of (or maybe not) with financial ambitions (you want to make some cash) - you want to start a huge site, like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, with obvious financial ambitions. Your ambitions and where you stands towards the community you are building a website for will determine your approach. In the following part, we will go over at the various options and the typical costs you can expect. Starting a website for a a real physical community you are a member of This is by far the most simple one, as a big chunk of the marketing will simply be word of mouth in your community. It's sufficient to have a person with some influence in the community promote the website (perhaps yourself) and the rest of the group will join. To start from zero, as with any social network website project, you'll have to think about the needs of the community. Lets take an example. If you are starting a site for a soccerclub, the website will need things like groups, fan profiles, sharing of photos, event management calendar, etc. Social networking sites are always built with the same basic principle: the goal it to provide online sharing and organisation tools for the members of the community. If you are starting a website for an existing community of which you are a part of, you should have a pretty good idea of what the people need. Make a list of the functionalities you need, and compare this list to the features of social networking software packages like boonex, phpfox or Dzoic. These are complete out of the box social networking website scripts that you can upload on your website. If this seems complicated to you, you can often get help from the technicians at the customer service. If the service doesn't include this, take a look at the many freelancers available on elance.com for example. The average cost of such software is around 350$. That might look like a lot of money, but the advantage is that you fully own the site and that you have complete control. You won't have any branding issues (your own logo and design will be on the website) either. If you are building a website for a community which really doesn't require all of this, you can do it a lot cheaper by creating a network at Ning. This is a website that permits people to create social networks on their hosting platform. A basic social network can be started for free. Remember that when you choose this option, you will be completely dependent on Ning. The name of your website will include Ning, the layout will have Ning all over it, and changing any of this will cost money. You'll have very limited control over your network: it is hosted by Ning, implying that if Ning goes belly-up - so does your site.

So think about this thoroughly, check out Ning and check out some of the out of the box social networking software scripts if you want something more robust and reliable. Starting a niche social networking site with financial ambitions Excellent move! You have recognized that there is a huge stack of money out there waiting to be picked up. Niche social networking websites have been around since the dawn of the inet (remember yahoo groups? mIRC)? The difference is the fantastic technology we all have available now. Facebook is excellent for superficial networking. LinkedIn is great for professional contacts. These sites however do not permit the users to be anonymous (that would be completely besides the point of these sites), implying that members can rarely express themselves fully. And there comes the need for niche networks where members can meet & share all they want without their real-life social networks ever finding out! There are quite a few methods you can use to make this profitable. There is the obvious way of using AdSense on the networks, or affiliate links. There is off course is the huge e-mailing list you could acquire from having your own niche site. Put all this together, and a popular social network you own could be your new personal piggybank. If this sounds exiting to you, you'll need to thoroughly think about the following: What does the community require? Again, this is the basis for any successful social networking project. Go deep! Here is an example. If you are building a social network for people with insomnia problems, you could have the "what are you doing now" feature of most profiles customized to: "how many hours awake". Having nifty things like this will greatly enhance member experience. The members will feel like they are part of a community tailored to them, rather than being on a community website with features they don't need. You'll have already understood that Ning is not an option here. You need full control over the website. If your budget is limited (e.g. below 500$), you'll have to find a social networking script that meets your needs as much as possible to limit the cost of customization afterwards. These software packages are usually open source, implying that you can change whatever you desire. This means that if you do not have developing skills, you are going to need a developer to do it for you. To reduce your costs, get a script that meets your requirements already as much as possible. To find a developer, you can usually refer to the forum of the developers of the site there are plenty of young programmers out there who are willing to help you out for a very reasonable amount of money. You can also try a freelancing website. Before starting the site, you'll have to think about how you will seduce members to join you. If you know people inside the community already, then that is a very good head start. You can speak to them and try to get them on board. You'll need to hit existing forums, maybe place a Google ad, or write articles (like the one you are reading now), etc.

You want to create the next huge thing like Facebook, MySpace... Ok, knowing that you have most likely typed something like "how to start a social networking site", I am going to assume that you are not a developer. This implies that you will not be able to shake a social network out of your sleeve in the next couple of days. All is not lost however. First of all, get help. Find a group of people who like the idea, and put your minds together. If you can get financing from somewhere, go for it. That's what you'll need to start developing a site that does exactly what you want it to do, with security, powerful servers and everything! If you've got a great idea - try applying the same method as for niche networks - but think about getting financing as soon as possible. One you hit a hundred thousand users, your network will grow very quickly and you will pay huge amounts of money for the servers to host all of this! If you are dreaming about the next big thing, experiment a bit beforehand - create some groups on Facebook and see what it takes to get people to join for example Conclusion: -small community websites can be created using Ning - advanced, robust niche networks can be built using social networking scripts that come out of the box - Ideas for huge networks need financing early on to become a hit Looking for social networking software to get you started? Below software review site will show you which one to pick:

How to Start a Social Networking Site

1. How to Start a Social Networking Site 2. Starting a Social Networking Site: The Basics 3. Costs of Starting a Social Networking Site 4. Lots More Information 5. See all Social Networking Information articles 1. The World Wide Web is a powerful tool. It allows people to communicate and connect in ways that simply weren't possible a few decades ago. You can chat with friends on the other side of the planet, sharing photos and videos while you catch up. With the Web, you may be able to track down an old friend whom you've not seen in years. You can make new friends or even find your soul mate. Online social networking sites are some of the most popular online destinations right now. These sites tend to package services together in an organized and attractive way so that users can leverage the Web to make connections with others. There are hundreds of social networking sites. They range in size from enormous -- like Facebook and MySpace -- to smaller sites aimed at a specific niche -- like Ravelry, a social networking site for people who like to knit. These sites can bring people closer together while being miles apart. They can also be lucrative projects. Mark Zuckerberg launched Facebook in 2005 -- by 2008 he made the list of the 400 richest Americans with a net worth of $1.5 billion [source: Forbes]. The husband-and-wife team of Michael and Xochi Birch started the social networking site Bebo in 2005 as well. Three years later, AOL purchased the site and the couple netted $600 million [source: Mashable]. A quick glance at the history of online social networking sites will uncover several other remarkable success stories, too. Just because there are a lot of social networking sites on the Web doesn't mean the well is dry. In fact, someone may come up with a brilliant idea and implementation of a social networking site tomorrow and become the next great innovator of Web 2.0. That someone might be you. But what does it take to start a social networking site?

2. Starting a Social Networking Site: The Basic

Your first consideration for your social networking site should be its focus. Without a focus, your site will just be a mishmash of Web services and features. While your site may have engaging applications and a snazzy look, it won't make a big impact on your users without that initial focus. Do you want your site to be a general-purpose social networking community? If so, that means you'll be going head-to-head with some of the most popular Web sites on the Internet. Giants like Facebook and MySpace dominate the social networking space in the United States. In other countries you'll go up against sites like orkut (in Brazil), Bebo (in the United Kingdom and Ireland) or Hi5 (in China). These sites not only have several years' head start, they also have millions of members.

Another option is to create a site around a particular hobby or activity. Giving your site a central theme may help it through the initial launch and inevitable growing pains as you gather an audience. And by choosing a theme, you'll attract users who are already interested in the subject matter. Interested users are engaged users. That means they're more likely to contribute to the community and stick around. If there's nothing interesting for your users to do they'll just leave. Let's say you've got the perfect theme in mind for your social network. There's a potential audience out there on the Web just waiting for a community that caters to their interests. What do you do next? Make a list of the features your site will offer. This should include everything from member profile pages to any message boards or messaging services you plan to include. You may have to buy these features from a vendor or build them yourself. Some may even be available in a free, open-source format. Resist the temptation to include everything -- your site will become a chaotic mess if you do that. Instead, choose the elements that best fit your theme and work from there. You'll need a host for your Web site, too. If you expect your site to grow quickly, you're going to need a host that will provide enough storage and bandwidth to meet your needs. For the most part, hosting on the Web isn't free. Assuming you aren't lucky enough to find someone willing to donate hosting services, you're going to need to put money on your mind.

Costs of Starting a Social Networking Site

One way to raise money for your site is to seek out venture capital (VC). A venture capitalist is a person or organization that invests money into new businesses in the hopes that the business will succeed and return a profit to the investors. Many Web sites got their start via an initial VC boost that propelled them into success. A few, like the messaging service Twitter, have survived mainly on VC without any other real business plan. Only a small percentage of startup businesses ever receive VC. You may either have to supply the capital you need to launch your site on your own or seek a loan from a more conventional source. Every approach carries with it some risk. You should give careful consideration to every move you make before committing -- make sure you can cover costs if the site takes longer to succeed than you'd planned. Twitter became famous for not only being a popular social Web service, but also for lacking a business plan. Twitter stays afloat mainly through seeking rounds of VC. But that's not necessarily the best approach for the average business. You should take some time to formulate a business plan. How will your site make enough money to sustain itself or even turn a profit? This isn't an easy question -- even giant sites like YouTube still struggle with the answers. But if you don't spend time thinking about how your site will generate at least enough money to cover costs, your new project will have a very short shelf life. It's also important to remember that business plans aren't set in stone. As time passes, you'll find it necessary to revisit your business plan and make adjustments. You may find that Web advertising is your best bet at generating revenue. Or you might develop an application platform

for Web developers and charge them a small fee to incorporate their apps into your site. It's important to keep an open mind and remain flexible. Starting a social networking site is a big job. You'll have to build a foundation for an online community and then respond to its needs as it grows. It's almost a guarantee that your users will begin to ask for things you never considered when you first sat down with your idea. But if you stick with it and really put in the effort, you may find that a social networking site can be a rewarding project. Learn more about social networking by following the links on the next page.
Sources

Entheos. "How To Start Your Own Social Networking Site." Jan. 9, 2009. (July 14, 2009) http://webdev.entheosweb.com/2009/01/09/how-to-start-your-own-socialnetworking-site/ Forbes. "The 400 Richest Americans -- Mark Zuckerberg." Sept. 17, 2008. (July 14, 2009) http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/54/400list08_search.html?Name=zuckerb erg&Age=0-99&NetWorth=1.0-70.0&City=&Source= Glazowski, Paul. "Bebo Founders Talk History Of Network And Past Web Efforts." Mashable. March 16, 2008. (July 31, 2009) http://mashable.com/2008/03/16/bebo-history/ Hendrickson, Mark. "Nine Ways to Build Your Own Social Network." TechCrunch. July 24, 2007. (July 14, 2009) http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/24/9-ways-to-build-your-own-socialnetwork/ Klein, Karen E. "How to start a social networking site." Los Angeles Times. June 9, 2009. (July 13, 2009) http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/09/business/fi-inbox9 Miller, Claire Cain. "Venture Capitalists Look for a Return to the A B C's." The New York Times. July 6, 2009. (July 13, 2009) http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/07/technology/start-ups/07venture.html

9 Steps to Creating a Social Networking Site That Kills Facebook

The opportunity to overthrow the social networking powerhouse is now greater than ever. Just think, you (yes, you) could be the next Tom from MySpace or Mark Zuckerberg. Pretty cool, right? Definitely, but youre not going to be the next face of social media without heeding to the advice of successful business moguls of years past. American automotive guru Henry Ford once said, Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently. While these words of wisdom can still be applied over 60 years after his death, they have little to do with social networking. Lets face it, Mr. Ford knew nothing about the internet. That being the case, when creating a social networking site with intentions of dominating the web, it would be more appropriate to follow the philosophy of Steve Jobs Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal. Right on, Steve! With that in mind, youre ready to begin your path to social media domination, following in the footsteps of the great minds before you. I would wish you luck, but you wont be needing it. Follow the 9 steps listed below, and success is inevitable.

Step 1: Craft a Concept

The first step to creating the hottest new social networking site on the block is crafting the concept. Before this step can be achieved, however, youll need to prepare. How? Drop out of school (college, high school, middle school it doesnt matter), it will only hold you back. Briefly take note of the features that Facebook embodies or take the concept behind up-andcoming projects like Diaspora and run with it. With that out of the way, step 1 is complete. What? Were not actually innovating here, remember? Onto step 2

Step 2: Establish a Name

Two roads can be taken here. Your first option is stringing together two (seemingly) nonsensical words, a la Facebook. Make sure to leave out anything that might clearly explain what, exactly, your site is all about. Really, youll only be limited by your own creativity here. If youre running low on ideas, pick out a couple of items from around your room and combine them into one word (e.g. CoffeeFolder). If thats not for you, just make up a word that is complete nonsense, but sounds important (Twitter, Imgur, Bitly). Got it? Good.

Step 3: Obtain Venture Capital

Alright, lets talk finances. Building a social networking site of epic magnitude will come at a cost, and the reality of being a broke dropout will likely set in at this point. Dont worry, thats why venture capital firms exist to give you money! Google some venture capital firms and set up meetings with the ones you think will be a fit. Now youll need to prepare a business model to pitch. This is the easy part. Why is that? Investors are typically, well, old and likely have no experience with the internet. Write down some statistics, print out infographics, and get your vocabulary down. Youll want to make use of terms like web 2.0 and social media early and often. This will reassure them that you know what youre talking about. Once your pitch is done, shake hands with your investors and cash your million dollar check.

Step 4: Hire Some Employees

With your newly acquired funding, the first thing youll want to do is hire employees. Youre the head honcho now, you cant be wasting time actually working. So who will you hire? Well, thats the best part your friends.That hot girl from Algebra? Marketing coordinator. The guy that plays World of Warcraft on his Alienware laptop between classes? Programmer. You get the idea. Be the cool boss and pay them well. Remember, theyre the core of your operations. Keep them happy with loose deadlines and paid time off in the event of a gnarly hangover.

Step 5: Program Your Site

Its time to put your programmer to use. Unfortunately, while he appears to be a massive geek on the outside, he may know nothing about programming. Fear not, for every problem you encounter, theres a simple solution. The whole basis of your social network is taking the ideas of others and putting your own spin on it. Remember, great artists steal. Its time to put that into action. Rip the code of your favorite social networking website, slap your brand name on it, and youre done. If youre feeling especially lazy, just use a Facebook clone template.

Step 6: Launch Your Site

After cloning your favorite social network, or coding your own if youre particularly ambitious, its time to launch your site. Get a shared hosting account with a reputable company like GoDaddy, register your domain name, and start uploading files. The whole process should take no more than an hour or two. The best part of running with a company like GoDaddy is the fact that they provide unlimited hosting at cheap rates. Thats right,unlimited, they dont care how much bandwidth you use. Rest assured, your site will be able to handle the millions of page views it will inevitably have on a daily basis and run as fast as lightning. You may ask how a company providing such a service is able to remain profitable? The answer: nobody knows.

Step 7: Sit Back and Profit

With your network launched and millions of new users flocking to it by the day, its time to profit. How? Load it up with advertisements, duh. Much like privacy controls, users do not mind excessive advertisements. How do you think Zuckerberg pulled billions in revenue? Unlike Zuckerberg, however, youre going to pull out all of the stops: pop ups, banners, contextual ads, etc. This will ensure that your site earns at its full potential. Also, it will work to enhance your site by giving your users access to awesome IQ quizzes and free trial weight loss products. With your ads intact, feel free to sit back and watch both visitor satisfaction and profit margins increase.

Step 8: Sell Your Site

After milking the pockets of visitors and advertisers worldwide, you will soon be faced with the harsh reality of declining profits. At this point, its important not to panic; this is actually the moment youve been waiting for. Really? Yes, really. Its time to sell your site off to a company that has the power to bring new life to it. Youll be faced with a tough decision, but ultimately, its in your best interest to sell to a company that has proved to be successful in such endeavors. Popular choices include AOL and Fox Interactive Media. Settle for no offer below $500 million.

Step 9: Retire

With your nine digit check cashed and sitting in the bank, its time to retire. The last six months have been hard for you, and you need a lifelong break from the interweb. First, however, youll need to find a tropical paradise to retire in. Nantucket, the Bahamas, and Costa Rica are all popular choices. Pick one, purchase beachfront property, and load your newly acquired home with the most expensive technology and gadgets known to man. Oh, dont forget to buy a yacht and several luxury cars. Proceed to live out your life in pure bliss. The only difficult decision youll face now is: Beamer, Benz, or Bentley?

http://www.spruz.com/
Nine Ways to Build Your Own Social Network

The news may overflow with stories about the social networking giants, such as Facebook and MySpace, but a horde of companies are doing their best to reduce the fundamental features of these websites to mere commodities. These up-and-coming companies provide so-called white label social networking platforms that enable their customers to build their own social networks (often from scratch) and to tailor those networks to a range of purposes. The idea of white labeling a network is to make the platform provider as invisible as possible to the social networks users and to brand the network with the builders identity or intent. While definitions of social networking may vary, social networks are primarily defined by member profiles and some sort of user generated content. There are roughly three types of companies that have emerged in the space of white label social networking. The first provides hosted, do-it-yourself solutions with which customers can largely point and click their way to a brand new social network. Companies of this type interact minimally with their customers and rather focus on providing the network-building tools that they demand.

We have taken a sample of nine of these companies Ning, KickApps, CrowdVine, GoingOn, CollectiveX, Me.com, PeopleAggregator, Haystack, and ONEsite all of which provide free baseline services, and reviewed them individually below. We have also included the chart on the right summarizing all of these companies offerings. Credit for initial research into these companies goes to Jeremiah Owyang who compiled a comprehensive list of white label social networking services. The second type of company provides social networking software for download and installation onto ones server. The third type works very closely with clients to build a social network based on their needs. These companies might suite your needs much better than any do-it-yourself social networking service, so you may want to check out companies such as Social Platform (a personalized service) or phpFox (a downloadable solution). Well take a deeper look at these services in Part 2 of this post. Out of the services that we review below, we found that Ning provides the best platform for setting up good-looking, sophisticated social networks with minimal effort. KickApps provides the best platform for integrating social networking components into existing websites. CrowdVine and Haystack are viable options for organizations that are looking for simple social networks to improve personalized communication online. CollectiveX is most suitable for existing groups that want to collaborate online. And GoingOn provides a promising hybrid solution with capabilities shared by both Ning and KickApps.

More details on each are below.

Ning
Ning (which means peace in Chinese, in case you were wondering) currently provides by a wide margin the best platform for setting up fully functional and visually appealing social networks from scratch. While Ning attempts to provide essentially the same out-of-the-box service as GoingOn, Me.com, PeopleAggregator, and ONEsite, none of its competitors can yet match the professionalism of its product.

The companys superior execution has so far earned it 76,000 hosted networks (although, browse Ningslist of popular networks and one gets the strong sense that the vast majority of these networks were set up by tire kickers and promptly abandoned). The standard Ning package allows affiliates to build at no cost an ad-supported network with all of the features that they offer. This entails a point-and-click setup process in which an affiliate chooses a theme, tweaks appearances, and loads features such as photos, videos, groups, and blogging. Within minutes, the affiliate has created an impressive, fully-featured (albeit rather cookie-cutter) network that is ready to accept its first batch of members, which can be invited by email or Ning ID.

For most affiliates, the ease in which you can set up a solid network will be the selling point. However, Ning also has offerings for more advanced affiliates that allow networks to partially break out of the standard Ning format. Affiliates can disable ads or run their own ads for $20 per month, and they can mask their networks URLs for only $5 per month. Furthermore, they have access to Nings comprehensive Developer

Documentation and an API for when they desire advanced customization. Effectively, their API allows developers to take the standard Ning network and retool it, whereas KickApps (discussed below) encourages advanced customization by providing developers with a bare foundation on which to build. While the Ning platform can be made almost entirely invisible by removing the top Ning toolbar and masking the URL, all networks hosted by Ning share the same user base. When a user joins your Ning network as a member, he or she obtains a Ning ID that works with all other Ning networks. On the one hand, this system facilitates the process by which users sign up for more than one network. On the other, it serves as a constant reminder that the network is actually hosted by a white label social networking platform. Many affiliates will not mind this system at all, but others who want to completely brand their community will consider this a detraction.

KickApps

Whereas Ning holds your hand from start to finish as you construct your social network, KickApps is targeted more at web developers (and companies with web developers on staff) who want to incorporate social networking features into their existing websites without going through the hassle of coding and maintaining those features on their own. As such, when you begin to construct your social network with KickApps, you will be presented with a pretty bland, default template that you then must mould to create anything decently attractive. Ning helps you customize your network with premade templates, but KickApps gives developers more immediate control over header and footer code and CSS styling. Consequently, it takes more time and expertise to get a KickApps network looking good, but in the end it may very well look more seamless and professional than any network hosted on Ning.

Other features provided by KickApps emphasize the intention for its social network components to integrate nicely into an existing site. The company allows you to customize your networks URL for free so users dont feel as though they are leaving a main site. Also free of charge: unlimited storage and bandwidth for all that multimedia content (video, audio, photos, etc.) you want your users to upload. Furthermore, each network is given its own user base so that members feel as though they are signing up for a particular network, not a platform (as is the case with the Nings universal ID system). To top it off, the company is willing to work individually with affiliates to make their platform as invisible as possible (by removing all references to KickApps, etc).

KickAppss advertising scheme is particularly unique. Whereas other platforms charge a flat rate to turn off the advertising that supports their free service, KickApps follows a pay per performance model in which affiliates who opt to turn off or run their own advertising only pay KickApps in amounts proportional to their networks traffic. With the free platform package, all but a single skyscraper area of an affiliates network are controlled by KickApps. However, once an affiliate decides that it wants to control advertising it pays roughly $2-5 for every thousand pageviews to its network, with rates decreasing as traffic grows. KickApps also provides the most robust set of widget creation tools, which is intended to help affiliates promote their networks through viral marketing. The widgets that affiliates create with an easy-to-use control panel display content shared or produced on a particular network and can be embedded on other websites or social networks. These widgets drive traffic to ones network by channeling anyone who interacts with a widget back to the network from which it comes. KickAppss 4,000 networks may pale in comparison to Nings 76,000 but the company appears to be gaining traction as it continues to roll out features. The recently released v2.2 of its platform improves the platforms video and content moderation capabilities and suggests that the company is moving towards providing better tools for quick and easy customization, thereby competing more directly with Ning for the patronage of laymen. Concurrently, KickApps is developing an extensive API (currently in private beta) that should reinforce its primarily role as service providers for web developers.

CrowdVine

CrowdVine may not be pretty or intricate but its not meant to be. Until recently a one-man show embodied by Tony Stubblebine, CrowdVine provides the simplest, most basic solution for those looking to set up their own social network.

The main features of CrowdVine are member profiles, blog posts, and public messaging. You wont find any rich media sharing capabilities, such as photo and video, in the basic package because Tony intended CrowdVine to be all about connecting people and not about sharing their forms of self-expression. As such, the platform has appealed mainly to conference organizers and attendees, alumni (of businesses and schools), intranet users, and professionals. The lack of control over the look and feel of ones social network corroborates the idea of CrowdVine as a utility provider. So does the fairly unique feature of having all members respond to network-specific questions, the answers of which become tags that facilitate the browsing of members by criteria. For example, new members to the PodCamp Atlanta network are asked about their interests and expertise, and their answers become linked tags on the homepage of the network that enable visitors to view members, for example, by their interest in blogging or expertise in video production.

While Tony is not rushing to add features to CrowdVine, he is happy to work with affiliates to add functionality to their networks. The Foo Camp network has taken advantage of the Tonys accessibility by integrating calendar and wiki support as well as color coding of members. Tony is also willing to work with affiliates to set up custom URLs and deactivate ads (for a fee of course), thereby achieving more of a white label result.

GoingOn

Representatives for GoingOn (still in beta) admit that their site is ugly (and, I should add, quite disorganized), but appearances tend to mask the potential of this companys platform, which is intended to straddle the divide between those of Ning and

KickApps. Built on top of Drupal, GoingOn provides easy network setup a la Ning, but the company is also partnering with media companies (with results such as Forbes Office Pranks and the American Superstar Mag Lounge) to integrate social networks into existing websites a la KickApps.

Currently, GoingOn executes neither of these services as well as Ning or KickApps. However, its platform does provide a wider range of features than either of these two companies (unfortunately, most of these features, or modules, are currently half-baked). If you demand features that neither Ning nor KickApps currently provides, it may very well be worth dealing with all of the imperfections that come along with GoingOns beta status. There are structural and strategic aspects of GoingOn that make it worth tracking over the coming year. Since it is based on Drupal, the company claims that it can more readily deploy open source software packages on its platform. This translates into even more features over time, which may help it maintain its feature lead on its major competitors. Its Drupal heritage also facilitates the creation of a Drupalesque API, which the company tenatively plans to roll towards the end of the year.

GoingOn, the self-described network of networks, maintains a shared user base for its hosted networks. Unlike Ning, however, it explicitly plans to take advantage of this shared authentication system by providing networks within networks. For example, teachers at one point may be able to join a nation-wide network that contains subnetworks for the countrys school districts. The possibility of nesting networks may give GoingOn the edge with hierarchical organizations. Affiliates can opt for one of five GoingOn network packages, each of which provides progressively more customization capabilities. Most affiliates will probably choose between a

Free Network and a Pro Network, of which the latter costs $20 per month but allows affiliates to manage their advertisements. Custom URLs are free of charge for all packages.

CollectiveX

CollectiveX is a borderline white label social network platform. Its questionability arises from its orientation around exclusive groups (groupsite being its word for network) and from its very narrow range of customization options. Additionally, members of a CollectiveX group cannot friend each other, so it lacks a basic feature of virtually every social network (apparently, it is presumed that everyone within a group knows each other).

However, beyond these idiosyncracies, CollectiveX provides an impressively refined way for people to share information and content within a controlled, social network environment. The main features of a CollectiveX site include a calendar, forum, and file area (for general uploads and photos in particular). These offerings are not extensive, but the mantra quality over quantity certainly applies. Unique to CollectiveX is the ability of a networks members to list personal objectives and to declare any key connections (read: relationships) they have with particular individuals. These features reinforce the feeling that groupsites are meant primarily for business professionals who are looking to network (in the business sense of the word) in addition to collaborating online with associates.

While CollectiveXs free package is supported by advertisements as with other platforms, the companys strategy seems to be particularly focused

on earning money through selling premium features. For $9 per month, network admins can remove advertising, but apparently there is no way to run your own advertisements. For additional payments of $9 per month, admins can also gain more control over group permissions, enhance network security with 128-bit SSL encryption, and increase storage capacity to 3 gigabytes. For a one-time fee of $99, CollectiveX will white label your network, which basically entails just dropping your own graphic into the header and importing members from another user base.

Me.com

Me.com, which runs on top of software called SNAPP, is the MySpace of white label social networking platforms (and I mean that derogatorily). The idea, as with Ning, is to set up a network in a minimal number of steps. However, each of Me.coms themes is an eyesore and, worse, the organization of elements throughout the default network is horrible. If you like this MySpace approach to user interface design, then youll be right at home. I, for one, get a headache just looking at the thing.

Style considerations aside, Me.com provides an abundance of features, although many of them are poorly implemented. The audio and video sections, for example, dont support file uploads; you actually have to record the media directly into the browser using a webcam or similar device. The most bizarre feature is the cars section in which you can actually list the cars you own/once owned/want to own/dream about, etc. Criticisms aside, Me.com does integrate a pretty slick chat applet into each network and the same cant be said for most of the other platforms.

Network packages on Me.com come in three flavors, which are conveniently compared to one another in a features chart. The biggest differences, of course, are between the free, ad-supported package and the other two. For a minimum (!) of $199 per month, affiliates can control advertising, customize their URL, and implement basic site branding (color schemes, logos, etc.).

PeopleAggregator
Broadband Mechanics PeopleAggregator is an experiment in building social networks around open standards so that people can easily move between networks, whether or not those networks are run by the same owners or contain the same features. If the social networking world were run the way Broadband Mechanics CEO Marc Canter envisions, Facebook users would easily be able to carry their identity (including all the information they owned on Facebook) over to MySpace, Orkut, and Friendster. Then any changes to their identities on those networks could be brought back over to Facebook.

As a model for this sort of interoperability, PeopleAggregator (which comes in both hosted and downloadable versions) implements the OpenID authentication system and strives to support all open standard identity schemes. Broadband Mechanics also provides an API that is meant to enable the import and export of data to or from a PeopleAggregator network. As a long run strategy, the company entreats web service providers to embrace open standards that facilitate interfacing between social networks and non-social networks such as Google Calendar, YouTube, and Yahoo Messanger.

Five years from now, we may look back on PeopleAggregator and consider it a pioneering product. However, in its present condition the platform is clunky and unsatisfying. Others seem to agree: the largest network on PeopleAggregator, Poker Players Alliance, with 499 members gave up on PeopleAggregator and moved its operations to an old school, phpBB forum. PeopleAggregator could be improved in a number of obvious ways. For starters, the company could and should promptly clean up the platforms landing page, which is littered with nonsensical text that doesnt exactly create a stellar first impression. More substantially, the company ought to allow for at least some management of advertisements and to permit more control over the structure and styling of networks. Unless you are banking on open standards as the way of the future, theres not much for you here.

Haystack

Haystack, a Cerado product, is a social networking utility that is even more stripped down than CrowdVine. Networks (or haystacks) built on this platform are very simple, both visually and functionally. The main features consist only of profiles and group blogging.

Haystacks are so plain because their intention is fundamentally different from those of most social networks. While we generally think of social networks as ways for people to interact with one another within a network, haystacks are more outwardly focused as they are meant to provide visitors with detailed information about people in a particular organization. According to Christopher Carfi of Cerado, the initial idea for Haystack was to enable organizations, and particularly businesses, to present interactive information about externally-facing individuals (such as those in sales and support).

Like CrowdVine, Haystack makes good use of tagging as a way to find people according to criteria. Members across all hosted haystacks can search for each other by the tags they have assigned to themselves, and there is even a handy Google Maps integration that shows you where the people in your search results are located across the globe. Recognizing that the default haystack layout may cramp some peoples styles, Cerado provides an API that can be used by developers to take advantage of the haystack data structure and create applications on ones own sites.

ONEsite

ONEsite, a subsidiary of the hosting company Catalog.com, provides a hybrid social networking/website hosting solution. They allow you to mask your social networks URL so that it meshes with an existing website, but they wont offer you their free social networking solution unless you buy a domain with them. In the limited time of this study, we werent able to set up a network of our own.

Browsing the showcased networks, however, gives one the sense that ONEsites platform is not half bad. Some of the networks (such as the CEOs Crull Zone) follow a standard, ONEsite template with simple customizations while others (such as iVillage connect) are more fully integrated into existing websites. However, it is unclear whether the more fully customized networks are designed by the ONEsite team under the expensive, $2,500-per-month Enterprise package or created by affiliates themselves with ready-made tools. I suspect that the former is the case.

Regardless of the platforms quality, ONEsites offerings are steeply priced and their user limits are a bit draconian. The free offering only permits 100 users on your network, the $30-per-month offering permits 1,000, and the $200-per-month offering permits 10,000. I suppose no one is really intending to build the next MySpace on this platform, but from a cost point of view, the difference between 100 and 10,000 users for ONEsite is probably near nothing. If you have created a network with ONEsite, please let us know about your experience with them in the comments.

Cost of building a social network site drops to near zero

Analysis First $500 copycats, now Open Source catches up By Fernando Cassia Mon Feb 02 2009, 18:42

PLENTY of firms are trying to profit from the gold rush towards so-called social networking sites after the success -or at least popularity- of Facebook, Linkedin, Hi5, and other such sites. And the cost of entry for new players is getting lower all the time. Facebook may be one of the fastest-growing social network sites, but its technology is far from unique. Besides the existing entrenched competitors, small software firms are also selling scripts that allow anyone to start a Facebook look-alike site for three-digit figures. Of course, those new sites do not have the third-party applications nor any significant number of users when they start up, but those also help dilute the novelty appeal of the concept. Consider webmail: at one point all webmails were the same, until Google came along and reinvented the concept with its GMail. And now, even Open Source software is getting into the game of offering anyone the ability to create their own social network. All bad news for Facebook which will continue to see competing sites mushrooming. In short, its underlying technology is not unique and, being a web service in the "cloud", can be easily copied. Copycat sites are appearing all over the place and targeting different market niches, whereas Facebook positions itself as the "one size fits all" of social networks.

A firm from India sells a script to run your own "face book" site for 210. Now Open Source software is offering similar abilities to create social network sites. For instance, there's a handful of popular Facebook clones in operation in China, and those have been in operation for a long time, even before Facebook landed with its own site. About six months ago there was a good comparison of existing Facebook clones published over here. In Russia, Facebook had to face Vkontakte, the locally-developed, Russian language social network site when it decided to land in the country with a Russian-language Facebook last year. And in Germany there was StudiVZ, sued by Facebook as it claimed it was a "counterfeit product" due to the similar look and feel. But while most of the high-end Facebook clones already in operation were likely developed inhouse, last year we saw plenty of small outfits trying to profit from the social networking gold rush by selling turnkey solutions - scripts written in PHP or other server side languages - for around $500 or even less. These allow anyone with a hosting account or server to create his own basic Facebook copycat. Of course, without the complexity and array of features of the real one much less the user base. What shocked this scribbler however is the sheer number of people who continue trying to create their own social network web site from scratch by hiring freelance programmers, and hoping to hit gold as if there were not enough Hi5s, LinkedIns and Facebooks in the

webospherealready - see here or here. Of course, the availability of lots of search engines didn't stop a pair of clever guys from creating Google. But we can't help but think there's a bubble of sorts in this social network sites craze. The only apparent reasons to start coding a new Facebook clone site from scratch seem to be, (a) if you have revolutionary ideas for new features -in other words you want to create the Facebook killer that doesn't resemble any of the existing sites. Or (b), you want to target a special market niche which requires special needs. For the rest, the small shops offering ready-made turnkey solutions can be enough to have a Facebookalike site up and running in a matter of hours or days rather than months. Why would anyone want to run a social site, well, that's a different question. Unless of course you have a very specific market niche. Some commercial FB clone offerings One such piece of code that claims to offer a "face book clone" - notice the very wise wording and spacing :) - is dubbed Kootali and sold by "Agriya info way" a firm from Chennai, India. The firm is selling its server side application for $297, 210 or 232 and for that you get "99.9% source code", whatever that missing 0.1 per cent means. Another company that has been offering for quite some time its own social networking software "like Facebook" calls it "SocialGroupie" and it sells for $490, 345 or 384. The CMS approach Others build a "facebook clone" on top of existing Content Management System (CMS) back end software, like the popular Drupal. One such scripts is dubbed "Kickwork", and is listed over here. Ebizoncharges between $900 and $3000 per project for customization.

Open Source enters the picture And as if all this wasn't enough, and the barrier of entry wasn't already low enough with 200 scripts from India, there's now Joomunity described as "a facebook clone for Joomla" in other words, a community site and social network built on top of the popular Joomla CMS. Joomunity, of which version 1.1.0 beta3 has been released two weeks ago is GNU/GPL Free Software, with no licence fees and all source code available for you to hack. Find it over here. As some have noted, except for the use of the Facebook name, there's very little Facebook can do to sue copycat sites, unless they make an exact copy of the HTML or bitmaps, you don't have many chances of winning a trial on the U.S. on the grounds of user interface look and feel, at least after the landmark Lotus vs. Borland legal case. So what are you waiting for? There is certainly room on the Net for a thousand more Facebook clones. Or is there? In any case, this scribbler hopes the open source project thrives and kills all the cheap for-profit knock-offs.

How to build a social networking site from scratch ?

Posted onMay 24, 2011byadmin

Just like building good house with great foundation, a good networking site should have a broad outlook of the users needs as well as include the best features and applications. There are many important things that should keep into consideration before jump start a new site. This are the guide lines just like the plan to built a house. Apart from considering all other things, it is good to decide on the concept behind setting up this website. Be sure of the determination of the site so that you can add some professional levels of specialization. The next step will be selecting a name for the site. To get attention of people especially the curious type of people, it will be intelligent to avoid naming the site a name related to what it is all about. Find a name that is unique but interesting, it will build the flow of people to the site as they try to understand more information on its purpose. A name is very important, just like it shows your view that is completely different from other people even from the ones that resemble you, so it will differentiate your site from others that may soon reflect what you will be doing. After you have chosen a good concept lay out and the name to go with the site, then you can go on and look out for donors to fund your project. Of course this is probably for anyone who are undergoing financial problems to jump-start the project. Make a list of all promising donors and spend some time to explain to them what the site is all about. The great thing about the internet is that many people have finally recognized its ability, thus you are likely to find a financier quite easily and fast. For those who have the knowledge and time to set up the site, then they can go ahead. For the newbies you have to import a qualified website designer to guide you through. Once you have determined your work source, work closely with them to make sure that your concept have reached within them. Treat them well and fix the budget and the time frame they are working under can be adjusted accordingly. When the site is done, have a look at it out first to determine its viability and then find a person who can host it on your assistance. There are lot of host services providers as there are internet to help out. It should be easy finding one. Launch your site as soon as possible for everyone to enjoy. A networking site with some great characteristics will always get attention of people who are ready to connect with others. But before you sit back and relax, you will need to include some advertisement into your new site. It may be pop ups, banners or contextual advertisements. The pay per click ads will be always better for the learners who do not know much about monetizing a site. You can now sit back and loosen to enjoy the profits that have build from your sites activity. I like to compare a great site to a great hotel. The owners of a well kept and managed hotel are always granted to receive numerous customers who are ready to enjoy their atmosphere but the owners of disheveled hotels have to keep on begging people to inflict them even when they have the best food in town, thus a good site should draw attention of a first time user with its great characteristics before they can even pass judgment what its all about. Most important above all is that which source you have chosen to build a website .As mentioned before as seeking donors to fund your project, other than that you have got another option .ie install open source social network software within your site. This will help to reduce your budget on building your site. But before choosing a social network script ,make sure that you have done enough research on these social network software. Now its very easy to find a suitable one as our technology have developed a lot.