Social Media Site

[Jewels]

I'm doing some research on building a social networking site and I have a few questions. Can I start a SN site with a CMS like Joomla and add on extensions and stuff? OR do I have to get actual social management software like Buddypress, Jomsocial, Elgg...etc. Some of these cost and some are free (open source). What would be the best route to start when the business will scale to several million users? In the future, when I acquire more money, users and employees, I will add some features to the site that aren't found in extensions so they will have to be programmed from scratch. I assume my whole site will go under maintenance to really streamline it. But I don't want to lose users when it goes through maintenance. I just need to figure out where to start because I don't want to end up having a 'Facebook/Myspace' and then it has to shut down for a time being. I'm afraid could lose a lot of users or even files/profiles.
Thanks,
Jewels :smxF:

 

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[socaldude]

I see several assumptions here. What is the problem your site solves? What specific user do you have in mind? What is your revenue model?

1. If you can't walk into the bathroom and look in the mirror and say "i'm starting XYZ product/service BECAUSE of ABC problem" then there is no reason for you to start a start up. You need to identify a problem and then envision the company that solves this problem, you are just envisioning a company(i'm starting a social network).

2. The most successful start ups are those whose founders CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD a problem they were dealing with and then worked backwards to EXECUTE a solution to that problem. You need to CLEARLY have a user in mind. When facebook started this user was a college student.

3. Who is giving who money? Are you gonna sell ads? Are you gonna charge a fee to users(not recommended)? Maybe at first there may not be much of this, but providing value will be #1.

A start up is like a science experience, there is trial and error and you follow wherever the trail leads. *You follow the market. *Most of the time when you start a start up, you will end up doing something way different than you predicted.

I cannot stress enough: understand you users, understand your users, understand your users AND understand the problem, understand the problem, understand the problem.

The better you understand the user and better understand the problem the better chance you have of creating a product or service that will be crazy successful!

You see the bridge that connects the user(the consumer) with the problem is the product or service. And you need to have the first two(user and problem) before you even think about creating the product or service.

Ask yourself what do people bitch about? What do consumers wish existed?

 

[socaldude]

oh and if you do create a social media network, please share with us =) , Good luck! :wave:

 

[Johab]

You also have the mingle plugin for wordpress that is a bit more lightweight than buddypress. But like said before here, social sites are hard to be sucessfull with. After all you are up against big companies if you make a mainstream community....

 

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[flamboyant]

Hi Jewels,

How much budget do you have to spend? I'd suggest that you create a real product (even if it's only with the minimum functions) with a reliable framework like django or ruby on rails. You can hire freelancers to do this (depending on your requirements) for about $4'000-5'000. The thing with fiddling around with wordpress & similar plugins is that people WILL notice if it's a tinkered solution and the user experience won't be the same.

I suggest you do the following things:
- Create a wireframe and "draw" your specifications
- Write a paper draft with your requirements

After that, it'll be more clear in which direction you want to go (use "your own" product or fiddle around with some CMS plugin).

 

[Johab]

at much on development unless you have a real big budget. The reason is that even if you build a community with better technical solutons than facebook, I doubt people would change unless you had a strong marketing.

 

[Rain]

I'm doing some research on building a social networking site and I have a few questions. Can I start a SN site with a CMS like Joomla and add on extensions and stuff? OR do I have to get actual social management software like Buddypress, Jomsocial, Elgg...etc. Some of these cost and some are free (open source). What would be the best route to start when the business will scale to several million users? In the future, when I acquire more money, users and employees, I will add some features to the site that aren't found in extensions so they will have to be programmed from scratch. I assume my whole site will go under maintenance to really streamline it. But I don't want to lose users when it goes through maintenance. I just need to figure out where to start because I don't want to end up having a 'Facebook/Myspace' and then it has to shut down for a time being. I'm afraid could lose a lot of users or even files/profiles.
Thanks,
Jewels :smxF:

Here is an easy option to consider if you're looking to start a social networking site: Ning – Create a Social Networking Site with Ning, the Best Social Site Platform

But yeah, like another poster has already said, make sure you are solving a problem if your goal is to go Fastlane.

 

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[Johab]

If you decide to go for a Wordpress/buddypress solution I will recomend to use the theme I just found for my heavy metal music community:http://metalwebonlineradio.com/.
You can download the theme free here:http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/custom-community

 

[Jewels]

Thank you for all your responses! This is not a general SN site so I will not be going up against FB or anything like the such. It is a niche SN. I will be solving a very clear problem I just don't care to get into detail with it because my problems lie within the developmental process. I do not have that much to spend on developers which is why I'm going the CMS route. When it does get more users I will be upgrading the site and making changes to features. I just don't want to interrupt my site when the time comes to put up the new and improved one (which might have a very different foundation) But I am not a techie so I don't even know if I could make a change in the type of foundation. So you'll have to excuse me on that.

 

[DeletedUser397]

Just a note, if you're looking to get a lot of users easily, I would recommend leveraging the Facebook API or Twitter API, rather than building your own network from scratch (even with a CMS it's harder to convince people to sign up for yet another new social media service). Basically with the Facebook API, they will be able to register or login with their Facebook credentials, and you'll automatically be able to access their name, email, date of birth, location, etc. or however much data you want. This can also help your concept go viral faster as you can generate more sharing this way.

This is actually A LOT cheaper since you don't really have to build much at all. Facebook already takes care of most of the authentication and data for you. All you need is perhaps a frontend and some backend mysql/php to correlate any new data with each Facebook user specific to your niche site. If you've seen or signed up for Pinterest, you'll know what I mean...

 

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[CommonCents]

anyone have some updates on buddypress, ning etc...other solutions? I'm getting down the road on a new web project, a portal of sorts for a very underserved large market. Thinking on getting up and running quickly to get some critical mass with existing stuff out there to plug in together, and upgrading things ongoing.

At first look, buddypress seems very basic w/ blog and comments as the social network base, am I wrong and just looked at a real basic example?

my situation would be a solution to offer as a platform for several subsites. my domain would be the url with a "/subdomain" type setup for hundreds or hopefully thousands of subsites.

 

[JamesS88]

Hi Jewels,

I also had a fastlane idea for a social network. It solved an actual need that I had along with what I suspect millions other do as well. Long story short, after extensive digging, I found that someone had the same epiphany only they had it a few months sooner. They appear to be executing well, the sight looks great. Although, it's still in its infancy. I signed up and was told I was one of the first 5,000 users.

All I'm saying is do some digging. You would be amazed how many social networks there actually are out there. There were many that I had never heard of. Make sure someone hasn't already beaten you to the punch.