There are lots of social networks from small to huge ones like Facebook or MySpace.
Although trying to create the next Facebook may not be a good idea, you may want to create a niche network or empower & add new features to the network you already have.
Here are 6 open source social networking applications which are developed continiously, well-documented & offer impressive functions.
Elgg
Elgg is a mature social networking framework which offers:
- advanced user management and administration
- social networking
- cross-site tagging
- powerful access control lists
- internationalisation support
- multiple view support (eg cell phones, iPhone)
- an advanced templating engine
- a widget framework and more.
Its plugin based system enables adding new features easily from a plugins database or creating your own.
Elgg is built with PHP / MySQL & comes with a JSON API.
PHPizabi
PHPizabi is a feature-rich open source social networking engine for creating & managing basic-to-advanced communities.
It is built with PHP / MySQL & besides every feature that can be thought for a social networking site, it offers:
- a multilingual interface
- mass mailing to users
- creating blogs
- forum integration & more
