When it comes to the word “social network”, Facebook and Twitter are probably the first ones that come to the mind. And, creating a new one can sounds like “creating an alternative to them (which is kinda crazy)”.
However, there are lots of niche social networks out there which are used by millions of people. And, creating a new one is not something crazy, actually, something not that hard.
Dolphin, a professional PHP web application, is the most popular self-hosted solution for building such communities.
The application has all the core features (and more) that can be expected from social networks like connecting with friends, status updates, messaging, chats, image/video sharing, groups or events.
Members can discuss on forums, have personal pages or blogs and there are even e-commerce features where the site owner and/or members can create stores and sell stuff.
Visitors can register with their e-mails or sign-up with Facebook Connect to see which other Facebook friends are there (also invite them).
Considering audio/video is shared too much on social networks and handling audio/video streaming +processing can be expensive, Dolphin has a custom media server that takes care of this.
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