Social networking sites are online communities where people can interact with friends, family, coworkers, acquaintances, and others with similar interests. Most social networking sites are Web-based and provide many ways for their users to interact, such as chat, messaging, email, video, voice chat, file-sharing, blogging, and discussion groups. Social networking sites provide an immediate and personal way to deliver programs, products, and information to individuals or friends within your personal network. Examples of social networks are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram. Build your own social network with free social networking software.
Elgg
Elgg Social Networking Software is an award-winning open-source social networking engine that provides a robust framework on which to build all kinds of social environments, from a campus-wide social network for your university, school, or college or an internal collaborative platform for your organization through to a brand-building communications tool for your company and its clients. Elgg was voted the best open source social networking platform in 2008.
It has been used to build all kinds of social apps:
- open networks (similar to Facebook)
- topical (like the Elgg Community)
- private/corporate intranets
- dating
- educational
- company blog
- Well-documented core API that allows developers to kick start their new project with a simple learning curve
- Groups – out of the box support for user groups
- File storage powered by flexible API that allows plugins to store user-generated files and serve/stream them without booting the engine
- Notifications service that allows applications to subscribe users to on-site and email notifications and implement integrations with other their-party services
- RPC web services that can be used for complex integrations with external applications and mobile clients
- Elgg community that can help with any arising issues and hosts a repository of 1000+ open-source plugins