Social Network Software

You can set one up easily with Ning.com - if you want more
control than Ning offers you will have to deal with development
headaches.

I'm a fan of Drupal, which has social networking plugins and is
scalable to handle the demands of a social networking site.

My suggestion is to keep your interface and focus straightforward
and easy to figure out. I've seen complex social networks tank
under the weight of the visionary founders' desire to make the
site do everything imaginable. Such stuff chews up dollars,
your time, and bandwidth and also social networks are notoriously
hard to make money with.

You can look at Dolphin too:
Dolphin :: Smart Community Builder :: Free Software

Check out Elgg: elgg.org/index.php

The easier ones are the ones at BoonEx - Community Software Experts

They are free, specific for social networks, and work very very well...

Hi Lou,

I used Pligg, it's a free open source so it depends on your programming skills. There a few things you have to edit / customize. We built one for testing @ (www)sociallister(dot)com for example. Hope this helps.

Thanks Guys, this has really helped.

Use phpfox....it's one of the best and simplest..

Hi there,

I've done SO much research... we've finally narrowed it down to three options, I thought I'd share with you so you could see what our research and thorough investigations have lead us to:

We are still evaluating these three options:

Amember for the membership management with Wordpress-mu and buddypress.org
or Amember with PhpFox plugins
or Just PhpFox (as it does have subscription mgmt.)

Here's what we were looking for:
- different membership levels, each of those can see different areas of your site
- bill your users for an advanced area of your site,
The users need to be able to
-chat,
-write in a forum,
-to share audio/video and other media with each other,
-to create profiles, to relate to each other
and all this with entering only a single password
- must integrate with Autoresponseplus
- must integrate/provide instructions for integrating with my payment processor (AND other popular processors - paypal, 2CO, etc.)

The one's we reviewed that did not meet our specs:

Social Networking Software Platform & Social Media Community Building Applications - KickApps - paid membership module was not easily integrated, would have to have 2 different databases
WishList.com | The Only Way To Wish for Registries, Baby Showers, Weddings, Birthdays, Holidays, & more - no
Niche Socializer - The "Perfect Storm" of Profit-Pulling Web Trends - purchased, but at the time the program just didn't work, may have changed since then.
Social Network Empire: Build a customizable social networking site - don't know if this will do what I want yet, have a friend that is using and she says the customer care is incredible but she hasn't fully explored the functionalities. (www.curvygoddesslounge.com)
SocialGO - Social Network Maker - Create Social Networking Websites, Blogs, Forums & More - could not create different membership levels
Elgg.org - the coding required to create one-login/secure payment/upgrade/downgrade was the reason we said no
Dolphin - we were excited at first, but cc took too long to respond so we crossed it off

Hope this helps others!
Anisa

Wow Ravenaven,

This is amazing thanks so much for sharing, I have gone through a couple of these already but you have given me a great short cut here.

Thanks again
Lou

I'm with Loren - Ning.com is a great place, and it can handle massive communities.

Hey Lou ,
My good friend Carlos has a great social networking script available. I was actually in the process of using his product but my plans of setting up a social network site were put on hold due to another project I am currently working on and took priority over my plans of launching a social network..

Anyway , Carlos Garcia has worked extremely hard over the last year building this platform from the ground up - It is a great product that would benefit you greatly. He is always on the forum - check him out - send him a PM.. He will treat you right..

Take care ,
Jason