Be The Master of Your Social Network
Being a member of Facebook, Myspace and Linked In can be fun… but hey the novelty eventually wears off. Besides, why be a mere member when you can build your own online community for professional, cash-chugging purposes. A social network easily becomes a vehicle for any marketing, advertising or linking endeavor. Want to have your own for a pittance?
Believe it or not, you can quickly establish a social network complete with RSS feeds, member profiles, discussion forums and dating apps. Visit Ning.com or Nexo. It costs nothing to start building the rudimentary site. The only time you’ll upgrade is when your network expands to over a few thousand members or when you want to strike out those annoying ads popping all over.
Mosey over to Ning.com. Yep, load it on a new page right now. You’ll agree with me that it simply has among the best design tools for forging a snazzy social network. Want to organize the main page? Simply drag a text box, form handle or forum widget into the layout window. Satisfied? Move on to choosing colors, fonts, background jpegs. Juggle them a bit to suit the site’s temperament then save. Now you’ll want to invite the first close friends to sweeten the pot (hey, who’d join a network with zero members?). Simply fire up the import client and addresses from Gmail, MSN, hotmail, Aol, Yahoo and any other web mail service are processed for invites. They’ll sign up in seconds- especially if Jessica Alba graces the front page of your site.
I kid you not- give it a day and your finalized site will shine like a gem. Even better than clunky Myspace’.
An alternative to Ning is Nexo. It offers a superb site builder a tad simpler than Ning’s. Simply select templates from a wizard or begin from scratch. Insert a few dozen modules including the feeds, polls, images and discussion groups. Presto: another Myspace clone!
You’d want to try Nexo if pressed for time. For instance, you just snagged a hot date in 7 hours and want to impress her by owning a MyFace.com site before meeting up. Nexo can get you something flashy enough in less than an hour.
Ready to master your social network?
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Comment by Nascar on 21 January 2008:
Pretty sweet. Now we all can be community leaders, but it is hard leave a network that has all your friends on it like facebook and linkedin.
Comment by Joseph Plazo on 21 January 2008:
Set up something professional like ecademy.org and I’ll surely sign up.
The others tend to be cheesy…
Comment by The Critic on 21 January 2008:
I’d like to setup a network of phone crazy fanatics. Hoohaa… complete with trading forums and polls
Comment by Andreas Stephan on 21 January 2008:
Hi,
among Ning and Nexo, there are a number of other services that allow you to create your own social network. E.g. there is also http://www.kickapps.com/ or the European service http://sixgroups.com.
@Nascar. the idea behind these services is more to gather a smaller set of people around a specific topic, hobby, or event than to have “everyone you know” in the network.
Comment by Mark from Bloglyne on 21 January 2008:
I have thought about this too… but I’m having a hard time rolling out the projects that I have on my plate at present. Where to find the time to do this? Perhaps it’s time to hire some help?
Comment by Eva White on 21 January 2008:
Looks like worth trying. I’ll definitely give it a shot.
Comment by rutherford on 22 January 2008:
Yep, hire somebody. Outsourcing is the way to go.
Read the Four Hour Workweek?