Create your own social network!

Written by Alcides Fonseca at 2007/11/01

Until now, if you wanted to create a social network for your self, the answer was almost certainly Ning. Today there are over 115,000 networks there and it’s growing.

When it was launched, October 4th 2005, it was a revolutionary idea that Fred best-described in TechCrunch:

It means anyone can now get their ideas out there and build a project (some people would call it a mash-up) in a few clicks, with no developer experience. And if you are a developer, you can pop under the hood and change it to your liking, no questions asked.

In the recent past, every time a web2.0 service is launched, some opensource alternative is also released. Well, yesterday I found an interesting article in the .net magazine where it lets you host your own social network. It’s easy to do, you’ll just need a PHP+MySQL server but that’s what it gives you the power over Ning. You can change it around the way you like and add or remove more features, and so on.

I don’t believe this is a Ning-killer since the average Joe doesn’t have a hosting account, nor time to set it up and hack around. He’ll just go over to Ning, create a social network and play around with the theme editor. And users of multiple networks will share their Ning ID!