How many of you have ever wanted to build your own social networking site? We’ve all used the big sites like MySpace and Facebook, and heard how much money they are worth. I know I dreamed of building a site and getting a peice of that billion dollar pie.
It’s not enough to just have a dream, or even a great social networking site idea…trust me =o) I built an adult themed social networking site and in the begining things were amazing for such a new site. I was getting 300+ new members a day! I was getting so much traffic that I thought I was getting DDOS’d and started banning IPs that I thought were bots. Once I caught up to my paranoia and realized that my little niche site was actually going places I unbanned all the IPs and just kept on building.
Sadly things didn’t keep growing as quickly as when I originally started the site, but on average I get 50-60 new members a day which is still nice. I know I’ll never be Facebook with it’s 500 Million members, but I am okay with that…after all their can only be one Facebook so why bother trying to battle the big social networks.
I have enough competition in my niche to keep me competative.
Their are a lot of options when it comes to starting your social network. Their are pre-built sites that you can use to create your community such as Ning, or you can buy social networking software such as phpFox, or Social Engine, or you can pick up a free script such as phpizabi or Elgg. Each one has it’s pros and cons. to test an idea out it would probably be beneficial to go with a free option and see how much interest your site gets from the social networking world. if you find a good niche that people like, I’d reccomend going with phpFox as it’s the best script I have found.
It’s got it’s perks having a social networking site…but I’ll save that for another day.
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