The Simian Downtime Analyst |

Image via Wikipedia

Social networks have evolved greatly in the past few years. I find it quite refreshing since they began as a few niche networks that they are working their way back to this model. Back in the origins of Myspace and Bebo and Facebook, many folks signed up to be ahead of the curve and chat with people of the same mindset. Unfortunately for them, it was like a catchy song and some time after they were overrun with crappy profile pages, crappy bands, spam, and crappy company branded ad pages.

Once again needing a safe haven, these folks decided to write software that would help others get away from the people they could not stand. Enter Ning, Kickapps and the other white label social networking solutions as well as the open source brigade.

One of the reasons it has been skimpy around here lately is that I was tasked with creating a social networking solution for several different venues. To be honest it was quite a frustrating experience. The white label networks are generally finished products when you get them, offering gadgets to fill in the gaps in Ning’s case when i wanted to add chat. Kickapps was similar because only a widget was required.

The open source projects have the potential to produce much better networks. While kickapps allows the user to modify the CSS, PHPizabi and Elgg give the user any option they can bear to work toward. Another benefit of the open source models is the lack of ads.

In the end, the hosting of the network will likely be the deciding factor in this instance. White label works best when you do not want to host the service, but the open source alternatives work best to create a personalized community.

Here is a list of open source social networking solutions.