Over this past weekend I played with the open source social networking platform Elgg. I set it up on elgg.chasesagum.com for testing to see how well the installation worked and to test out it’s features. I must say that it works great and the installation went smoothly. If you are looking at building a social networking platform for some reason, maybe for your business or maybe as a business venture in and of itself, I recommend Elgg open source. It has a slick interface that looks better than MySpace ever will and it’s of course open source which makes it even better. Here are some of the features mentioned on their site;
- Blogging
- Social Networking
- File repositories for individuals and communities
- Podcast support
- Full access controls
- Supports tagging
- User profiles
- Full RSS support
- Rss aggregator
- Create Communities
- Collaborative community blogs
- Create ‘friends’ networks
- Import content
- Publish to blog
- Multilingual
- Branding/customization
- OpenID support
Some of you may be asking yourself, “why run my own social network?”. Especially when you already have Linkedin or MySpace. Here is what Elgg had to say in response to this question;
“For organisations concerned about their data but still wanting to harness the power of social network, you can. The ability to customize and brand your network exactly how you want. Connect together networks to create a truly distributed, global network of sites – the way the Internet should be! You can develop specific functionality to suit your needs. Even thought MySpace is too big to be useful? Create specialised, targeted networks instead!”
This could potentially be a huge benefit to several business models. The first i’m thinking of for example is Real Estate agents and brokers. An entire social network of real estate agents and brokers that can communicate with each other and collaborate and teach each other. Not to mention share leads internationally. Just a thoughts. Be sure to go to www.elgg.org to download this terrific open source social networking tool.
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Thanks for the mention! We think social tools have a lot to add to lots of business models – real estate is definitely one, but there’s a whole range of applications. Where software like this really gains over centralised services like Myspace and Facebook is in control: you choose your features, what happens to your data, how you interact with your users. And then using services like Explode, why not find other people on other niche networks who are interested in the same things as you?
Thanks Ben for your feedback. It’s really good for myself as well as the rest of our readers to hear from someone within your organization. It helps us feel like we have a “connection” with your company and product. I must admit that I think the possibilities are endless with the application you have created. I think it’s one of the most important open source apps that have been released. Keep up your great work!
Good to read your installation was a smooth going trip
I’m having HIGH troubles gettin’ Elgg 0.8. installed – tried out everthing possible – even got mod-rewrite ON; tried with database imports and so on, – it’s not moving – / probabely it’s a very little mistake i don’t see – but it’s frustrating.
No problem getting to the admin-panel for first setup – but as soon I ’save’ my settings I get a blank screen without any actions following.
Anyway I read alot of good comments to Elgg – but do not find any solution or help for my problems (elgg forum [eng/ger] was no help).
Thx alot -elot-
Only in case you can give a hint; please send me a mail
i really love Elgg and i will like to have more infos on how to setup and more implementing i will like to get training on it. since i am a Bsc. Mathematics minor Computer Sciences student at the university of Buea, Cameroon. we are working on building our own social networking site for our school. i will be grateful to have more infos on training on this product and others,
thanks for your understanding.
EbotT
Ebot, go to elgg.org. They actually have some good documentation on how to install elgg and configure it. Join their community. They are nice people and are very very helpful.
First of all thank you for a such wonderfull topic, well i have to say it is difficult for me to say if i agree with you or not. I will read it for a second time and let you know what i think