Facebook? Why Not CREATE YOUR OWN Social Network?!
June 24, 2007 |
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.
hey, you totally forgot about the greatest offering out there: elgg.org’s open source social networking software (much better than barnraiser.org) – they’ve been powering tons of huge custom networks, including university of brighton…it’s way easy to install, and if you’re interested you can see a site i put up at researchzilla.com (used to be running on drupal, but i had to kill that slow beast…)
I seriously doubt that this model will work in the long run. The idea of a social network is for people to congregate in large groups in a select few destinations. Giving every John and Jane Doe their own social network will only cannibalize themselves.
Imagine you started a social network and want me to join, frequent and participate. I start my own and want you to join, frequent and participate etc … you get the picture. Sooner or later all these little social networks will just go silence into the abyss.
I can definitely agree with you on that. I somehow believe it works better to join various niche groups on existing networks than creating your own. When you have a platform and lots of people already there it makes communication in the framework of a particular group easier. Besides, we already have special social networks for almost everything (dogster, catster, smokers, developers, designers, gays – whatever). What could I create a social network for?
Exactly …. actually, most of us already have our own social network: it’s called a Blog.
CrowdVine Reviews…
Roll Your Own Social Network with CrowdVine 9 Ways to Build Your Social Network Setting your own network is dead simple. You just need to pick a name, pick some profile questions, and then send out invites with a……
Hi Robert,
I’m doing some research on the question on creating a Facebook Group, or building your own network. I know there’s a huge difference here, but sometimes people/companies etc think they can get on the social networking train if they have a presence on Facebook… which in their minds is a group.
Do you have any ideas where to start looking? I know Jeremiah Owyang has done some writing (mostly on Walmart etc), but I’m looking to see if there is something concrete.
Thanks!
With all the valuable discussion on whether the future is bright for Facebook, Myspace type sites where millions come together rather than create your own social networks using Ning, I am now confused. If I want to jump into this competitive world should I create another Facebook or Ning. Ofcourse, if i can setup a different business thats great, but the idea is not there yet.
Hope for some feedback as to the trends, possible future opportunities.
Regards.
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An awesome new resource for finding jobs or hiring someone is a new online community, http://www.WiHire.com. WiHire is a free online community that helps people find and fill jobs by allowing users to broadcast their job information to their online networks. It is a known fact that most jobs are found and filled through personal networks, but still people continue to hunt for jobs on job boards that grow more impacted each day. WiHire helps users easily leverage existing networks like Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, MySpace, Gmail, and Blogger to help get a job or fill an open position. This service promotes community involvement to help users and their friends find the right job or hire the right employee.
The founders said, "We wanted to do our part to help improve the economic situation so we are providing this pro-bono service to the public. WiHire is our gift to everyone that is struggling in these tough economic times."
Check it out at http://www.wihire.com
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These comments are helpful but I am not sure where to go from here. I was driven here by Facebook. Facebook has become like My Space, too juvenile and over populated. Every one seems to be a member. They brag of two hundred million members. There are only about 275 million tax payers in the country. this means nearly everyone in the country is on face book. This in turn means every irresponsible dumbcluck is posting trash on FACEBOOK. I have an account and i have added freinds, but like a bad pyramid sceme it keeps growing with poeple i should know or add to my friends. I understand that is the idea, but it is a bad one. So, this is why i would want to find out how to create a FACEBOOK or MY SPACE social networking service. I have some other ideas on how this should be administered. Where do I start?
Terry, I am afraid you misunderstand the members of Facebook a little as you somehow think it is only for the US citizens – which it is not actually as people globally join the social network and it has been translated to a number of foreign languages exactly because such people want to enjoy Facebook in their own language. So if you are unhappy with what you currently have on any of the available social networks, creating a social network for yourself and only inviting the people you will want to communicate with there sounds like a reasonable idea and you can try Ning.com as it offers exactly this. But you will face another problem that will be opposite to that of Facebook – it will be empty until you manage to get people to use your social network.
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