[Webpub] Create your own social network sites

[Lisa C. Mayer]

Our blog has a new post:  "Create your own social network sites"

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Create your own social network sites
January 9th, 2009

Here are two interesting sites to check out if you are looking to  
create your own social network site.


Ning (http://www.ning.com/)

Ning is great for those without alot of technical knowledge and who  
don’t want to host anything on their own hardware.  It takes seconds  
to set up a site (I made one here for fun http://mitwebpub.ning.com/)  
and you can choose from a number of design templates available.

"What makes your own social network on Ning special? It’s yours. Your  
brand and visual design. Your choice of public or private. Your very  
own members."

Free features include inserting your own brand, member management,  
your choice of custom text and widgets, rss feeds in and out,  
discussion forum, video feature and branded video players, chat room,  
facebook integration, groups, member blogs, and an events calendar.

Premium services are for fee, and include things like controlling ads,  
removing the Ning promotion, transferring your own domain name, more  
storage and more bandwidth.

Elgg (http://www.elgg.org/)

Elgg is an open, flexible social networking engine, designed to run at  
the heart of any socially-aware application. Building on Elgg is easy,  
and because the engine handles common web application and social  
functionality for you, you can concentrate on developing your idea.

Elgg is open source. That means, when you use Elgg, you have the  
benefit of being part of a large developer community, with the  
security and stability that hundreds of eyes can provide. It’s also  
headed and used by Curverider and its partners, so you can be assured  
that it’s in commercial use and will cope with the demands of a  
popular application.

It runs on Apache, PHP and MySQL - the same open source platform that  
the majority of web applications are written in. Elgg is compatible  
with enterprise technologies like the Zend Platform and any server  
environment that can run the Apache web server.

We believe in an open, distributed, social web. As a result, Elgg  
supports technologies like OpenDD, OpenID and OpenSocial, and we are  
directly involved in community efforts to push the envelope when it  
comes to data portability, federation and the user experience. Elgg is  
a great way to future-proof your social applications.

Elgg was founded by Ben Werdmuller and David Tosh, and has been  
powering networks since 2004.



Lisa C. Mayer
MIT IS&T - DCAD
Web and Database Consultant
lmayer at mit.edu
ph:  617-452-4225
fax: 617-258-6875

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