Hi, I'm just looking for insight and opinions from fellow members on Digitalpoint about their thoughts towards creating your own social networking site. I'm am not specifically talking about the type where you buy existing software and brand the site as you fit. I am more specifically referring to where you plan, and develop your own site and software from the ground up. I feel those are much more unique, and have a higher change of success as they seem to be more focused to a particular niche. In the current times of the internet, does it seem worth it to you? I have been planning since late 2006 to build my own social networking site, and I did to a certain extent. I ending up spending over a year planning and developing a site. Due due to pullouts of colleagues and lack of interest from testers I slowly let the project slide into the darkness. An excessive amount of study (tertiary) also contributed to this as it didn't leave enough time to research and plan how to develop certain features. I am planing to get back into the development from the starting point again, using some previous ideas. But this time I have decided that I will create a more specialised network for a smaller market for the moment, being less than 20,000 for now, one institution. The idea is for a site similar to Facebook's initial functionality of connecting university students (if i'm right there), but more suited to a different region, that being Australia. I also plan to make all people who join up for this second attempt sign agreements, if otherwise they disagree then not allowing them to be a part of the project. Do you see any value in doing so, or is it a lost cause? Disclaimer, please excuse spelling mistakes. (I posted this same post on Sitepoint too, so it will be almost the same, just getting opinions here) Thanks, chopsticks
No its not worth it. And it have few chance to getting big. But if you planning to have unknown social networking site then you can do it. This is due to there is a lot of competition out there. And you must have hard time in competing with bigger player in the indusrty
i tried social network for webmasters and its a disaster. If you have some unique idea and have balls to promote it you will succeed along with your hardwork. Setting up a social network is just very easy. Just get a free or commercial social network php script and you can setup social network within minutes. You may want to look at various social networking scripts in this site.
@mentos Our idea isn't exactly unique, but to the region where it will be available, it will. So surely they should hold quite a bit of weight to whether or not it will be successful. The social network will implement various features as current ones do, but just a more focused view point on the intended niche group. @olddocks I believe that most of the scripts out there, whether they be free or paid just aren't worth it. The sciprts lack quality from the ones i've looked at, hence a reason why I believe that sites which use them are doomed to failure, unless lucky. We want custom, quality code built to our exact specifications, hence our own system.
A site like Facebook will be very hard to be successful. There's already very known social networking sites out.
Could it really be that hard though to take even a small share? I've talked to quite alot of people and they are interested in the idea, but I guess we'll have to avoid doing anything people don't like, i.e how Facebook changed their design.