Seeking strategy for building a custom social network like 43things.com

Hi All,

I am interested in making my own social network site, with "custom functionality" for music related content, with an approach similar to 43things.com.

This post is a big lengthy since I want to make sure I provide enough info about my dilemma ... so I've provided section headings to try and give it more bite-size chunks:

* What does Social Network Software Provide - identifying why i need a social network application

* My Core Custom Feature & A Social-Network - explains the custom feature I'd like my social network to have/support

* Social Network Site Options - the options i know of that are out there for making my own site


WHAT DOES SOCIAL NETWORK SOFTWARE PROVIDE

I realize this is probably obvious to most readers here ... but to really make sure I had my head wrapped around my objective, I listed out this info.

After studying several popular sites and identifying what "social networking" actually seems to be (to make sure it's what i really need), I see that a social networking site has 2-3 fundamentals:

1) The ability to create your own profile page
* text, images, links, recent activity, etc

2) The ability to interact with someone else's profile page
* subscribe to their recent posts, leave a message, comment on a pic, etc

3) For the sites that are not purely profile-centric (facebook seems to be 100% profile-centric), like Digg & 43things, users congregate/socialize around a specific posting from some user.
* Digg: a user's favorite articles
* 43things: a user's list of "stuff i want to do"


MY CORE CUSTOM FEATURE & A SOCIAL-NETWORK

I have implemented the core concept for my music-based idea as a stand-alone/prototype in PHP. There is a basic PHP-based site that facilitates registeration and login.

1. The users logs into their account

2. On the user's "My Profile" page, there is a form for the user to input their favorite music group

3. The user submits each name of their favorite band and its saved to their profile in the database, and then displayed in a list on their "My Profile" page

4. When the user clicks on a band in their profile, they can see all other user names that have also added that group

Now I want to integrate this prototype with a framework where people can comment, subscribe to one another's profile, and do all the other nifty stuff that Digg, 43things, and Facebook allow... with the central theme being around a user's list of bands. [ ...and yes, I've seen last.fm ]


SOCIAL NETWORK SITE OPTIONS

So to build such a social network, I've read through a number of forum posts, and I hear arguments for taking one of two approaches:
a) Using some existing platform to build on top of ... like "AroundMe", "phpFox", or the like
b) Create my own "php script" ... which translates for me into -> build it all from the ground up

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Given what I want to build ... can anyone suggest a good approach.

Do you think it's easier to build all that social network stuff from the ground up, and integrate it with my prototype ... or is there a social network platform out there that would be good for integration with PHP like the prototype i've described.

For the pre-built solutions, I'm not sure which one to start with. I have tried to explore some of the open source and commercial packages out there ... but there are so many, I'm not sure which one to crack open. For the digging I've done into some of them, I still wasn't sure which platform would be best for my integration efforts/objective.

Like BuddyPress on one hand looks like a good option ... but it seems to be blog-centric since it's built on WordPress. I imagine I can eliminate the blogging component and just add my custom logic to work within that framework ... but i've been hesitant, because I'm not sure that's the best rabbit hole to go into.

Either way ... from scratch or with a pre-built platform, I know it's going to be a rabbit hole. I would like to of course pick the one that has the path of least resistance.

Any thoughts would be most welcome.

Thanks very much,

Gene

 

I'd look for off the shelf products first. Perform Google searches and rate each product/service by your listed criteria then select the one that hits most of your requirements. If you aren't satisfied with what you find then you'll probably need to create it from the ground up.

Start with http://www.ning.com.