Facebook? Why Not CREATE YOUR OWN Social Network?!

With the ongoing success and proliferation of Facebook and other SOCIAL NETWORKING sites, it's now time to take a look at THE NEXT STAGE of this phenomena of Social Networking. It really all began with services such as LinkedIn and MySpace where people created “walled gardens” of their associates or friends. This idea later opened to online “Web 2.0″ services such as del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, MyBlogLog and a flood of other services wanting to “spread the word” through networking. Facebook lately has conquered the heap by building a platform to embrace both outside and inside the walled garden while still maintaining the idea of “growing your network”. The problem is, you're still in THEIR garden.

A few new services have popped up to address this issue. The idea is to provide an open and easy to use “platform” which allows people to create their own Social Networking sites with most of the bells and whistles of the larger services, but still being of a for a particular group.

The largest and most advanced of these services is Ning. This service, created quietly by the inventor of the Netscape (Marc Andressen) has slowly created a committed community of clubs and enthusiasts. While still not reaching a critical mass giving it instant recognition such as Facebook, it still has enough features to attract even the most critical “Web 2.0″er. Flexible design, easy addition of subgroups and, most importantly, the ability to add external widgets, will make some groups even think it's a viable alternative to the tried and true Meetup.com.

Another very interesting startup, though not nearly as robust and “widget friendly” as Ning, is the up and coming CrowdVine. This service is pretty straight forward to set up as Ning is, but is much less complicated and cleaner in my opinion.

There are no annoying Google Ads placed on the interface, as they are in Ning, and the simple way people can set up and place their information in their profiles while be appealing to even the most non-tech savvy group out there. My only complaint about CrowdVine is the lack of feeds you can put into your profile. While Ning gives you the ability to put in as many as you want (your blog, twitter, bookmarks, photostream, etc.), CrowdVine only gives you the ability to put in three feeds (one rss, one photostream and one bookmark services). The only solution I could think of to overcome this would be to use a service such as Tumblr to aggregate you “lifestream” before sharing it with the Social Network.

2007 is proving to continue the advancement of these services and you'll find it in your best interest to at least have a look and see how it can be placed in your social group or life.