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Create Your Own Custom Social Network Online

By Elizabeth Wasserman

After he moved to a new neighborhood in Rochester, N.Y. last spring, Neil Bardhan was invited to join an online social network -- not unlike Facebook or MySpace -- dedicated exclusively to his neighborhood called South Wedge. Using the network, Barhan, 26, connected with friends, learned about a local farmers market and found out about a group called Dog Walkers Against Crime.

“It helps to get to know what kind of people are in the neighborhood and what sort of resources there are,” says Bardhan.

Once the purview of teens, social networking has not only become useful to professionals networking for jobs and business contacts; it’s now helping people with a range of interests connect. Sites like MySpace and Facebook are giant social networks that let you create a profile and connect with friends or start private groups within the wider network. But a new breed of web sites allow you to create “white label” social networks -- the equivalent of your very own MySpace with your own look and feel and a private or public membership. And everyone from mom’s groups to book clubs to Little League teams to school classrooms are setting up easy-to-use, custom social networks so that people with like interests or situations can stay connected.

So, if you’re ready to create your own custom social network, here’s what you need to know to get started:

Q. Why should I create my own social network?
A. This really depends on the people you want to connect with in your social network. For example, you may be interested in building a social network because you have trouble coordinating meetings of your neighborhood book club. Or maybe you want to share photos, video and announcements with members of your local swim team. Or perhaps you long to reconnect with college friends who worked with you on the student newspaper. Whatever your reason for starting a social network, you need to be realistic about what gets people to join and remain involved.

“The goal is not to be the largest social network on the web but to be the most relevant,” says Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning, a San Francisco company that has one of the most popular free services for creating personalized social networks. “You want to meet a need for friends or family by creating a space to go and connect with one another.”

Getting people to join the network and stay connected requires inspiring passion and involvement, adds Thad Martin, senior vice president of ONEsite, another social networking platform based in Oklahoma City. “There’s a lot of personal expression involved,” he says. “People like to get in a group where they see peers express themselves, uploading photos, adding blog posts, etcetera.”

Q. Where can I find a custom social network service?
A. Once you have a reason to network, a variety of web sites now offer free tools to let you custom create a social network. But before you do, here’s an important alert to parents: As with most social networks, custom social network services can sometimes include mature content that is suitable only for adults. So, before you allow your teens to set up their own network, be sure to thoroughly understand the service and its policies on content and privacy. 

Once you’re ready to get started, here are a few sites that are popular among do-it-yourselfers, and some tips for getting started:

• Ning is where hundreds of thousands of people have already set up their own social networks for free. “Ning is a platform that allows you to create your own social network in 30 seconds,” says Ning’s CEO Gina Bianchini. “You don’t have to have anything on Ning besides a great idea.” The first step is to select a name of at least six characters for your network and make sure it’s not already taken by another customer on Ning. With a point-and-click setup, you can create a social network most quickly by choosing default settings, or you can proceed through three web pages to customize settings. You can choose from 50 different themes and whether your network will be open to the general public or only to invited members.  On your network you can include photos, videos, events, discussions, RSS blog feeds or web widgets (like one that allows you to import your Flickr photo album). The final step is to invite members; this can be done either via email or using your Ning ID.
• ONEsite offers step-by-step wizards to help guide you through the process of setting up a social network on its platform. “We have a free version that you set up on a domain name you have,” says Martin of ONEsite. If your group doesn’t already have a distinctive dot-com name, you can buy one through ONEsite. The company will host the social network site for free. Once you have the name, you can go through the wizard and customize your site, choosing templates, listing questions for each user to answer on their profile page (occupation, hobbies, favorite books and so on) and deciding whether to add such features as photo and video galleries and discussion forums. You also have to choose whether to have your network public or private and whether to allow members to invite others to join too.
• CrowdVine is another easy-to-use platform for starting a social network and inviting friends to join in mere minutes. CrowdVine is a private company founded by Tony Stubblebine, according to its web site. All you need to do is select a unique name for your group (you don’t need to buy a domain name, because your group operates under CrowdVine’s domain name). Decide what type of information users should have on their profile pages and then invite members. You can invite members via email or import members who are involved in other CrowdVine networks.

Q. Can I create an invite-only network?
A. Though there are ways to create semiprivate groups within existing open social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace, custom social networks allow you to make an entire network private. You must make this choice when setting up your network for the first time. For instance, on Ning, when you’re setting up a new network, you’ll need to select from two options: “Public -- Anybody can see or join it” or “Private -- Only invited people can join and see it.” Once you choose private or public, you can’t switch the setting, so make sure you think about the public versus private option ahead of time. If you set up an invite-only network, the final step is inviting your friends to join in!

But before you go through the effort of setting up your own social network, the key is to be clear about who your network is for, and to be dedicated to keeping it alive. “I absolutely don’t think you have to be wise to Facebook or MySpace to create a social network or join a social network,” says Bianchini. “But the same things apply: Are there people who would join and is there a reason for someone to join?”