How to create your own social network

How to create your own social network

Contents

Social media has become an integral part of our daily lives. We use social platforms to be informed, entertained, connect with new people, find new business partners, and join communities that pique our interest.

The power of connection made available via social networks is incredible, so it’s no surprise that you may be wondering how you can create your own social network like Facebook.

First, let’s explore what a social media network is.

What is a social media network?

A social media network is essentially a digital tool that allows users to quickly create and share content such as videos, blog links, event announcements, photos, and livestreams with the public across the web and mobile.

Anyone can sign up for a social media account and they can use their account to share whatever content they choose to, and the content they share reaches anyone who visits their page or profile.

While many social media companies impose limitations—such as taking down content that doesn’t match up to specific guidelines and controlling when and how often content is seen—there are much fewer limitations on what someone can share on a social network in comparison to mass communication like newspapers, radio stations, and television channels.

Why you should create your own social network

Now that we’ve covered what a social media network is at its core. You may be wondering why you should create your own social network. What’s in it for you and how will you benefit?

As popular as social networks such as Facebook and Instagram may be, there are also a lot of challenges that users face by relying on using them to build their businesses and communities.

Here are just a few:

Reach is dying

It’s getting much more difficult to reach audiences on existing social networks. Algorithms are constantly changing and News Feeds are filled with distractions such as clickbait, ads, and fake news – all of this combined makes it virtually impossible to build a real connection with your people. With organic content only reaching 1-2% of your audience on Facebook, you’re not in full control of what your users are able to see unless you’re paying for ads.

No way to monetise

One of the biggest challenges that creators face with relying on existing social networks to grow their online community is the severe lack of monetisation options available on platforms such as Facebook or Instagram. There isn’t a way to charge for access to a Facebook group for example, and there aren’t any built-in options for subscriptions, donations, or eCommerce. If you want to monetise your audience you’re left having to look for an alternative solution to house your paid members, online courses, or masterminds – this means you’re dispersing your people on multiple platforms and having to figure out how to link and automate multiple pieces of technology.

No control

Housing your content on a third-party social network such as Facebook or Instagram means that you’re never fully in control. You will always have to play by whatever network you’ve chosen rules and have zero control over any changes they decide to make to their platforms. If the network decides to suddenly remove functionality that you’ve grown to become reliant on to build your business then you could lose your content or community virtually overnight.

Lack of customisation

Other than a cover photo or a profile picture there is very little customisation available on existing social networks. There is virtually no way for you to customise the look and feel of your community to fit your business or brand. If your brand identity is important to you, then a social network won’t cut it.

When you create your own social network, you eliminate all of these challenges. Community platforms such as Disciple provide you with all of the tools you need to reach, engage, monetise, customise, and control your audience so that you can achieve your specific goals.

Types of social networks

So, we’ve discussed what a social network is and why you should create your own social network. Let’s now discuss the different types of social networks available, so you can get some ideas on how to make your social network an amazing place that people want to be a part of.

So, the main social network types include:

Features of a great social media network

Now that we’ve discussed all of the different types of social networks available, you may be wondering what requirements and features you should consider for your own social network.

If you want to create your own social network to a high standard, the following features should be on your wish list:

If you can tick the above features off your list when selecting a platform such as Disciple for example to create your social network, you’re good to go.

Steps to take to create a social network

Now that we’ve covered all of the important points. Let’s get to the juicy details of the steps to take to create a social network.

1. Get clear on your vision

The first step is to get clear on your vision for your social network. Jotting down the answers to questions like what kind of social network you plan to create, what niche you’d like to target and what you’d like to achieve will help you to get crystal clear on what your wider goals are for your social network.

2. Define Your Target Audience

Defining your target audience and understanding who you want using your social network from the beginning will help you to ensure you’ve built your social network on solid ground. There are two ways to effectively achieve this.

Online research: You can find, collect and analyse, demographics and behaviour habits of your ideal groups of people on the internet or with a quick search on Google. You can also create and send surveys to your ideal social network users to get their thoughts on what features and functionalities are important to them.

Test and learn: With this approach, you can create a social media network and then test it on real people and then get feedback from them with 30 minute interviews to figure out what you can modify and adapt.

3. List down your essential requirements

Now that you’ve figured out what you want to achieve and who your target audience is, it’s time to put together a list of essential requirements. You can jump back up and pull some of them from the ‘features of a great social media network’ list above. For example, If you’re a fitness coach, then livestreaming may be an essential need for your social network.

4. Select your choice of technology

You have two options to create your own social network. You can use a white-label solution such as Disciple that is built out of the box and which can easily be customised to suit your branding, and is available on web and mobile OR you can create a social network from scratch, the second option takes much longer to build and can be more expensive as you’ll need to hire developers and pay for hosting but both are options to get your social media network out of your head, set up and into the hands of the people who matter.

5. Promote Your Social Network Effectively

Once you’ve decided on the best option for your choice of technology and set up the logistics. The final step is to promote your social media network so you can drive people to your online community. Some quick ways to achieve this is by promoting it on your website with banners. Sharing it with your wider network via email or through your existing social media channels or even using paid ads to let people know that your community exists.

Final words

Creating your own social network is a great way to have an owned and interactive space for your community.

Here at Disciple, we help you to create your social network by taking the best features of social media and turning them into tools that allow you to gather, engage, understand, and monetise your audience. We guide you through every step of the process.

The result is a web and mobile-friendly community space on a secure, GDPR-compliant platform. Your own space in which to communicate and interact with your customers. Without all the hidden costs, complications, algorithms, and distractions of social media.

How to Create a Powerful Social Network Platform in 8 Steps

Facebook now has 2 billion worldwide monthly users, Twitter 328 million, and Instagram 700 million.

How did Mark Zuckerberg change the world? He built a global community that brings people closer together. The origins of Facebook are available to the general public. Everyone is familiar with the story of building social network platform that will greatly impact human relations and economy. Mark’s vision of community opened a door to many variations of social media network platforms that today exist. Jack Dorsey created Twitter in March 2006. Rome may not have been built in a day, but Twitter was built in just two weeks, says Jack.

Facebook has now 2 billion monthly users, Twitter 328 million and Instagram 700 million worldwide users.

Mark did pave the way for many new social media networks. He got one brilliant idea that greatly impacted the humanity. However, other social media channels were created only because their CEOs were smart enough to recognize good opportunity at the right time. Facebook did all of the hard work and now building a social network website from scratch is a lot easier process than before. Nowadays, creating a social media network can be done quick by following certain unwritten rules and regulations.

How to build a social media network/community website from scratch? What does this mean from business and development point of view?

I’ve compiled a list of 8 steps that you need to follow in the process:

1. Identify your community

If you don’t want to shoot in a dark and have financial losses you need to identify your community. The process of identification needs to be done in the brainstorming stage. Social network platform is created to meet certain needs of the population. Identifying preferences and dislikes of your community will help you in better understanding the psychological factors that affect them as a consumer and what you can do to get their attention. Sometimes the need for what you are offering won’t exist on the market, that’s why gathered demographics and psychographics data will give you the power to trigger and create that need.

2. Define the features and functions

The definition of the features and functions is tightly related to the quality of the identification of your community. Your community wants and needs will shape and outline the features of developing a social network website. What do you want your users to do? How will you define the privacy of the data?

The overall vision of your website is crucial. Macro scan that will break things down into categories such as user functions, administrative functions, and advertising is a must thing to do.

Defining the type of data that will circulate, what they can post, how they will register and what automation you should use is only the beginning. There are a lot of things to be considered at this phase.

3. Choose the right technology

Identifying the features and functions of your social media network will determine the platform and the company where you can create your own network. The biggest issue at this stage is the doubt about what method will be effective and efficient for your social media network. Evaluating technology is something that must be done by professionals. Hiring a consultant to help you compare technologies is a great solution. It will save you time and money.

The questions will allow you to see if their technology and solutions completely support your idea.

The last thing you can do is analyze existent social networking platforms and what building technologies they have used. This learning process will help you figure out various issues and opportunities for your social media network. Here’s a few other useful tips when choosing which social network is right for you.

4. A must have structure

Once the user-specific features are listed, you must prepare the growth environment. Certain general rules apply for building all web pages and are out of huge importance for your social media networking platform since you are trying to engage users in social activity and keep them longer on your site. There are three must have pillars that you need to incorporate if you want your social media network to be successful and profitable.

5. Design Activity Stream

What is a social network site without activity stream? Nothing. Nowadays, activity streams are the core of every social media website. Facebook introduced this feature first and since he sets the standards on the market, the concept went mainstream and affected everyone. The fascination people have with their friend’s activity is real. We want to know what they are doing, how they are feeling every moment of the day. Failing to develop quality activity stream can affect the attractiveness of your social media network. This is the focal point and the driving force behind the success of launching a social network. You can use Joomla ‘s plug ins or Drupal’s activity stream module that accomplishes this very well

For example, activity feed of Ning allows you to connect your network to Facebook, Twitter or to add RSS feed. Stay always tuned with the comments, likes and shares, which are shown in your news feed. You can make publications in the form of tweet or post, and decide what to show in your activity feed, and who can see your updates. These features let you highly customize your network.

6. Create Status Update Features

Status updates are crucial. Every social media user wants to express their feelings and thoughts freely anytime of the day. You need to design the perfect tools that will make the status updates pleasurable and easy experience. Even though Facebook popularized the activity stream, Twitter made the status update another mainstream aspect of social media sites. Status updates are incredibly addicting. People are immediately hooked. If this feature is not user-friendly and easy to use they will abandon your social media platform immediately. What can you do to design the perfect status updated tool?

It really depends on the values your social media is built. Twitter made an amazing move by limiting status updates to 140 characters. The developers were grateful for that decision. It made their work so much easier. Of course, you have to make sure to add comment adding options on the status updates. In other words, interaction with other users is everything.

There are a lot of open-source microblogging platforms you can use for developing quality status update features. Laconi.ca or Identi.ca are perfect for it. If you are using content management system like Joomla, it is easy to make a content type that has a limited number of characters.

7. Quality Viewing Data options

How to increase the engagement level and clicks on the site? You need to create multiple data viewing features that will increase the visibility of the content on your social media platform. Remember, users will see only what you allow them to see. Do you have enough data viewing options available? If the answer is no, then check the list of features you need to make available for your users:

— Popular Upcoming Stories

— Popular Stories in the last 24 hours

— Popular Stories in the last 7 days

— Popular Stories in the last 30 days

— Popular Stories in the last year

Remember when Facebook launched their timeline features? How fascinated everyone was by the fact that they can access history data so easily, with just one click. Users get excited a lot of social data.

8. You need to attract the right users

After everything is said and done, in terms of defining the target audience and developing the right features the next step is attracting the right users. There are a lot of tools that will help you create awareness on the market. Facebook was created in a college environment and it was a pioneer in the social media industry. What helped Mark the most is the good old word of mouth. Even though this is a traditional marketing tool is still effective. Before people start talking about your social media they need to be aware of it. Digital marketing has tools to increase awareness. It has the right set of available options that will help you reach your goals and it’s cost effective too. Here’s how to do it:

With the numerous available resources today, creating a social media platform is easier than it was in the past. Doing a quality research is a must activity before you start with anything else. The right information can save you time and resources. There are three types of companies that have emerged in the space of white label social networking according to Techcrunch.

In their article, they review the best social media building tools and rank them based on quality. Remember to focus on the tools that will benefit your idea the most. Focus on the core values of your social media platform and build it the best you can. Success is inevitable if you plan everything the right wat. Who knows, maybe your idea will change social media forever.

How to Start and Create Your Own Social Network Site Like Facebook from Scratch and Make Money

December 16, 2021

You look at Facebook and wonder how this guy (Mark) makes a lot of money from the air. I think you have a logical question, can I repeat his success? Let’s look at how to create a social networking site like Facebook, Youtube and earn good money.

Easy money doesn’t happen, of course, if you don’t play the lottery) Although there to earn money, you need to have good luck. Facebook, like other companies, has no exceptions. Legal claims, problems with financing (at the first stage), problems with confidentiality, etc. This is certainly not pleasant, but when your product enjoys popularity, these all go into the background. So the first rule is to have patience and be ready to fight. Everything starts with small.

1. Development of ideas

Big projects start from an idea. It must have value and be unique. Of course, you can copy the idea of Facebook, but who needs Facebook #2. Take care that your social network is interesting for users. Segmentation will help you in this. You can build a social network for lovers of movies, books or music. But…. this already exists. Anyway, the idea should stand out you among other similar projects. Like the crypto currency exchange platforms, which are gaining popularity in the world.

Very often people have an idea, but they are afraid to tell it to their friends. They think that someone will steal it and earn a million. This is a big mistake. First, to make a project, you need money and effort. A lot of effort. Secondly, no one gives a guarantee that a good idea will have great success. So, only you can create what’s in your head. Moreover, the more you share your thoughts, the more feedback you get. Maybe you will find like-minded (co-founders), who will help in the development of the social media website.

2. Preparing for the development of a social network

Short documentation
First of all, you need to make a list of the functions of the future project. This can be a small document, which briefly describes the goal of the social network and its functions.

3. Social network design

Design plays a big value. It should not be flashy or dull. It is best to use modern web design trends. It will allow you to promote your network more actively. In addition, the first page should have a call-to-action, so you can get more signed up users. Trust only professionals.

4. Development of a social network

The development of a social network site begins with the choice of technology to be used. They can be divided into two types: ready-made CMS and frameworks. Let’s see what is the difference between them and what is better to use.

Social networks CMS
These are already ready social network with a template design and main functions. You will only need efforts to develop a new design and customize the project to your requirements. The most popular CMS for social networks: BuddyPress, Dolphin, phpFox, SocialEngine, etc. Although, such systems have a whole set of problems.

-The first problem with the speed of work. They cause high load and bring failure. Two clients addressed to our company Merehead, in 2018. They had similar problems. We could not help them because the projects had to be completely rebuilt.

-The second problem is poor scaling. If you need to add new features, it will require a lot of effort, time and money.

-The third problem is the project customize. It can take a very long time. Since the CMS does not provide a global customization. New functions may conflict with the old ones. It will be a movement in a circle.

As you can see, the popularity of CMS is falling. BuddyPress leader among them.

Frameworks
Frameworks are used to develop different web applications. In fact, they are universal and designed specifically to improve the quality of the code and speed up the coding process. Projects based on frameworks have high speed, high security and scalability. In our company, we prefer to use Laravel PHP-based framework. It should be noted that there are about 10 popular PHP-based frameworks (CakePHP, Codeigniter, Zend, Symfony etc). You can see the dynamics of popularity below and check the web development trends.

The main disadvantage of using frameworks is that the project needs to develop from scratch. This will take time and resources, but in this case, you can be sure that the website will work stably and bring profit. In fact, this is your investment in the future.

5. Testing and launching a social network

After the completion of the development, it is necessary to check the social network. As you understand the bugs in the sign up/login or in the main functions will very badly affect the promotion of the social network. Users should enjoy your website. Our company has experience in developing social networks. For example, our project Frevend got 50,000 users in few months.

6. Marketing

— Google Adwords. I don’t recommend using it to attract users to the social network. The cost of clicking is very high. Google Adwords is well suited for expensive services.

7. How to make a money by own social media website

Monetization of the social network has its own features. Users are not used to paying, which is why most networks, including Facebook, are completely free. I believe that two types of business model are suitable for such projects.

-Advertising. Users have access to all the functions and features of the social network for free. Money is collected from advertising space. Thus, the advertiser pays for clicks on his site. This business model uses Google and Facebook. Its disadvantage is that it is necessary to develop a separate platform/module for managing advertisements. In addition, you will lose users, as they will move to other sites by click. This business model is well suited for large projects that have a stable audience.

8. Preparation for investment

When the project grows, it attracts the attention of investors. This is the moment that many beginning startups are waiting for. I have several recommendations to become more attractive in the eyes of the investor

— Take care of business models in the early stage. You must understand how you will make money before the development of the social network. Investors don’t invest money in ideas, they invest money in business. Their goal is to earn. If they do not feel profit, you can forget about investments. Yes, it’s tough, but they think like that.

— Don’t ever stop. Go forward, crush the mountains and achieve goals. The way to success is always difficult.

Social networks are the most interesting direction among startups. Facebook is going through hard times and people are ready to try something new. The most important thing is that your social network has a unique feature, something that can hook people. In this case, you can get explosive growth like TikTok.

❯ How much does it cost to build a social network?

❯ How long does it take to build a social network?

It will take about 1 month of development to build a simple social network with a standard set of functions. As a rule, part of the time is spent on design and code optimization based on open-source solutions. More complex and flexible systems require about 2-3 months of development.

❯ What determines the cost of a social network?

The cost of development depends on tech solutions. Open source has a minimal cost. The disadvantage of such systems is a limited set of functions, complex scaling, and poor code optimization. It is a good solution for MVP. The individual development from scratch will cost more. In this case, the social network will have clear code and the ability to easily implement new features. It is a good solution if you want to stand out among competitors and actively promote the business.

❯ Is making a social network worth it?

Yes and no. If you have an idea that makes you unique, you have a good chance of becoming popular in your niche. The number of active users on Facebook is decreasing. People are looking for alternative solutions and are ready to try new platforms.

10 Top Best Free & Open Source Social Network Platforms To start Your Own

Talking about Social Media Network websites the only names that come to our mind, those are best such as Facebook, Twitter, and few others. In today’s world, the social network is more than just a chatting platform, it is now a source of knowledge and awareness. Before developing any social network sites you should need to have a deep knowledge of PHP, MySQL, and Linux. But even having a knowledge of coding languages, still developing a social media platform is a long, slow, and time-consuming task and also nobody guarantees its success. So, how to make a social networking site? To build your own Social networking website you need some tools and open source social network development platforms are one of those. They come with pre-inbuilt tools that are flexible and help you to easily customize and build your own on top of it.

There are a couple of good online platforms available that allow you to create social networking sites but rather than using online platforms try to self-hosted social network software to get more control over your social networking website.

There are plenty of paid and free scripts to create a social network but if you are looking for the only free and open-source, please see the below-given list.

List of Best Open Source Social Network platforms to create a social network in 2021

SEE:

The Elgg is open-source social network software that is free to download. It is built on a framework that allows creating any kind of social environment; whether to start a social network for school, colleges, or for an organization to build communities you can use the Elgg. It is a 2008 award-winning open source social networking engine. Elgg uses the Apache, PHP, MySQL, and Linux environments and has a good community to solve the arising issues with a repository of 1000+ open-source plugins.

Elgg features

Dolphin social networking software

Dolphin Pro is open-source software for creating custom social networks and web communities. It is written in PHP and the database uses MYSQL. This social networking website software platform is fully modular and offers multiple modules such as Ads, Payments, Photos, Polls, Profile Customizer, Profiler, Chat, Profiler, Desktop, Facebook Connect, Forums, Videos, Memberships, Messenger, Page Access Control, World Map, Events, Custom RSS, Chat, SMTP Mailer, Sounds and more… It also features social profiles, timelines, likes, shares, voting, friends, Chat+ (WebRTC multiuser audio/video chat) and comments.

The Dolphin is available in three editions Free, Monthly ($29/month), and Permanent ($599/one-time). In the free version of your social media, it shows powered by Dolphin badge.

Opensource social network

The OSSN is another best open source social network software with a bit Facebook-like interface and features such as messaging, friend request panel, and few other elements. It allows creating a full-featured social media network platform that allows groups, photos, files, messages, and more. OSSN is multilanguage social network software, however, you can add as many languages you want. It is available in two versions basic and premium, furthermore the user can download it as an installer (Linux) or virtual image.

The Open source social network features third Party integrations, Tools Themes, Games, Audio Video Call, Authentication (Google reCAPTCHA), and more.

Humhub

HumHub is a free and open-source social network software kit and framework with a user-friendly interface just like Facebook. It is lightweight and features multiple tools to make communication and collaboration easy. The Humhub offers you an ability to customize it to built and create your own customized social network, social intranet, or huge social enterprise application.

The HubHum is a flexible system and offers a modular design that can be extended using the third-party tools to connect existing software or any other even written by you. The Humhub offers a self-hosted solution that gives full control over your social network, which means your server, your data, and your rules. Community and enterprise edition options are available.

HumHub Social Network Software Features

Oxwall

The above image is a customized Oxwall theme

Oxwall is a free social network software cum content management system. It is based on PHP and uses MYSQL as a database to deploy the social network environment development. It is available in three editions Free, Starter solution ($249), and Advanced solution ($2999). In the free edition, you will get the Oxwall software, Access to developers forum, Access to third-party plugins, and Access to the documentation. Their CMS is compatible with all types of websites and scalable too.

Oxwall social network CMS (content management system) Features:

BuddyPress

BuddyPress is a product of the well-known content management system WordPress. It helps you to create social media networking websites with WordPress. It is simple and tons of themes available online for it, those help you to easily customize the look and feel of your social network website. BuddyPress is based on PHP and can be customized easily if you have the coding knowledge. BuddyPress is a completely free & open source social network development platform.

The BuddyPress social content management system features Custom profile fields, personal profile, email notifications (Smart read/unread), allow your users to create micro-communities, plugins and extensions support, private messaging, friendship connections, a platform for discussions, and much more.

Other Available Opensource and Free Social Network Software projects

Apart from the above best and top social network platforms, here are a few other free software available online for creating a social network and collaboration.

pH7 Social Dating Software

pH7CMS is for those people interesting in building social dating websites. It’s a totally open source enterprise-class social dating web app builder. The pH7CMS allows developers to start social dating websites like Tinder or Badoo. As it is open-source, so a person with knowledge of PHP coding can easily customize it to full fill the custom social network requirements.

Jcow is a social networking script written in PHP, helps to make your own niche social network and online community. It has a Facebook-like interface.

Jamroom – Self Hosted

Jamroom Open Source can host on personal servers. It is also available in Premium & Professional editions with premium features that are paid.

eXo Tribe

Free eXo-based online collaboration platform dedicated to the community of customers.

Peepso

It is a plugin to enable the social networking capabilities of WordPress CMS based websites. It features Friends, Targeted Ads, Photos, Extended Profiles, Groups, BlogPosts, Chat, and Reactions.

AstroSPACES

Free and open-source social network software coded from scratch, web-based, and written PHP Programming Language.

Insoshi social software

Insoshi is a social networking platform developed in Ruby on Rails. It is free software and can use to create custom social networks. The compiled and source code of Insoshi both are available on Github.

Friendi

Friendica is to create a distributed social network. It is free software and developed by many people around the world. It features Post “Status Updates”, Photos, albums, tagging, privacy, Events Calendar, privacy with military encryption, relationship Control, browsing Network Filter, Themes, and Plugins, and much more.

AROUNDMe

AROUNDMe allows creating multiple collaborative groups, webspace, community, or social networking websites. It features tools such as a blog, forum, wiki, guestbook, and completely customizable with XHTML, PHP, Java, and CSS. Groups in AroundMe can be private or public.

Anahita

Anahita is another Open Source Social Networking platform & framework for developing open science and knowledge sharing applications.

Community engine

CommunityEngine is a free, open-source social network plugin for Ruby on Rails applications. User profiles, Blogs, Private messaging, Events, and Forums are some of its core features.

Mahara

Mahara is an open-source social networking web application to build your electronic portfolio. You can create journals, upload files, embed third-party, and collaborate with other users in groups.

Pump.io

It’s a streaming server for social media networks.

You May Like:

If you know any other open-source social network platform which is best in your case, please help us to grow this list. The comment box is all yours…

How to Create a Social Media Network Site Like Facebook:
The Success Story

05 January, 2022

Key takeaways

There are almost 4.5 billion social media users. Figure out why the social media market is one of the most favorable niches to enter.

Explore the Facebook business model and learn more about ways to monetize your social media website.

Use our comprehensive step-by-step guide to gain an in-depth understanding of how to create your own social network like Facebook.

Proper rendering, enhanced security, performance, content size optimization, and many other aspects should be considered during back-end development. Discover best practices that our Solutions Architect shares.

Learn more about Aimprosoft experience in social networking website development and find out what aspects affect cost and time estimation necessary to build a social networking site.

Is it possible to repeat Facebook’s phenomenal success and build your own social networking site? Well, there is nothing impossible since this top-ranked platform was a simple experimental website accessible only to Harvard students. Inspirational, isn’t it?

The human desire to socialize via the latest innovative tools is constantly evolving, making this field rather fruitful. Hence, continue reading this article, and we will explore the online networking phenomenon and answer your question of how to make a social media website.

Some facts and statistics about social media platforms

MySpace marked a milestone in the era of social media websites in 2004. Since then, the number of active social network web users has reached almost 4.5 billion people, according to the statistics overview in 2021.

The statistics are striking, aren’t they? To figure out what niche to choose when you plan to start a social network, let’s consider the types of existing digital networks.

Types of social network sites

The success behind any prosperous social network can be explained by the ability to meet its users’ needs. By following our list of the most prominent types of social networking channels, you will see what user requirements can be converted into a business opportunity.

After this field overview, we suggest considering our vision on the reasons for social media platform development despite all this plethora of social media websites.

Why do you need to build your own Facebook-like site?

What can be more convincing than dry statistics showing the real state of affairs? The graphs below will significantly help you answer why exactly you should make a social networking website like Facebook.

The growing revenue and the number of users, whose number reached 2.7 billion in 2020, strikes. The only way to obtain these numbers is to let people socialize via the website’s unique functionality, which the Facebook web app once successfully provided.

The idea to make a social networking website like Facebook is rather appealing because of the following business model: users are constantly looking for new networking sites they can trust, brands, in turn, are looking for potential consumers. You become the one who may benefit from such needs and develop a unified portal that will meet the requirements of both sides.

However, if you want to create a social network like Facebook, it’s desirable to identify its weaknesses and exclude them during the development of your product. The Cambridge Analytica scandal is a good example reminding social networking web app creators to constantly strengthen the systems that equally ensure data security and data privacy.

Once you are settled with the idea to start your own social network similar to Facebook, the perfect time comes to talk about its monetization.

How to make money on a social media website

There is a strong correlation between what segment of online social channels you want to enter and the choice of monetization strategy. So, let’s dive right in and look at the three most effective ways to make money from developing a social media website.

Renting ad space

By choosing this strategy, you may either provide your users with self-serve advertising that allows placing their ads in the form of the banners on the “sidebar” of the page or letting brands use special tools, similar to Facebook’s Dynamic Ads. The latter one is called targeted advertising, which is a rather mindful approach in marketing as it displays only those ads that are relevant to the users.

Premium subscriptions/Memberships

This type of monetization is best-suited for publishing platforms (like Medium) or media hosting websites (like Youtube). In case you want to charge a fee for access to specific high-quality content or paid features, then this strategy will suit your network perfectly.

Affiliate marketing

It is one of the fastest ways to obtain higher ROI over the short term. The core of such monetization is to promote on your social media website the product/brand you choose, letting your users click on the affiliate link and make a purchase. If the transaction is successful, you will split the sale price, which is a rather effective way in case your website has just been launched.

Now when we have explored the most widely used monetization strategies, let’s take a look at the business model that made Facebook such a lucrative platform.

Facebook business model overview

Facebook’s striking fame is explained by its successful business approach. It’s highly functioning due to the following formula: users’ data + AI/Ml algorithms processing this data + advertisers = major part of Facebook’s revenue.

The website’s business model is also formed with the help of users’ payments that they make within the platform. Facebook placed a great diversity of its products, mainly games (e.g., Candy Crush game, Zynga Poker), to offer users not only sponsored products but also native engaging ones.

Facebook’s business model wouldn’t have succeeded if the platform hadn’t been so user-oriented. Such an approach has been highly functioning for 15 years already and continues evolving according to the latest tendencies and growing demands of the users which should be considered when you plan to create your own social network like Facebook.

Features that social networking website needs

When starting social media platform development, we recommend integrating not only inherent to any social network one-size-fits-all features that are listed below but also innovative ones to stand out from your market competitors.

Profile creation and editing

To enable your users to exploit the full functionality of this feature, make sure you provide them with an easy single-click login (Facebook SDK, Twitter SDK, Google Sign-in, etc.) and the ability to create and customize personal profiles with the help of a diverse toolkit. It’s also desirable to integrate an option that will allow hiding certain data from the rest of the users if such a need appears.

Content publishing

To convert your potential users into loyal ones, make sure you provide them with all necessary and engaging tools for content creation and publishing. One of the most popular options to add are various editorial tools for textual posts, free and premium templates that users may customize to create unique posts design, etc.

Like, comment, and share options

Like, comment and share are certainly three pillars of any social media website. The human desire to become famous is what you may convert into a beneficial business model. You may offer your users to bonost their content, which will attract great influencers and bloggers to your social network willing to pay for their promotion.

Activity stream

It’s vital to make the UX of the activity stream, also known as a newsfeed, simple and intuitively understandable. People should be able to easily understand how to share posts, upload content, and adjust unwanted posts in the settings. Don’t forget to make your platform UGC-oriented (user-generated content-oriented) to reduce users’ churn.

Secure messaging via chat

The heart of most types of social media networks is chat. By integrating the messaging tool during social network creation, it is desirable to enable secure data exchange between your potential users that may be surely guaranteed by the integration of correctly set up TLS/SSL protocols.

The search for specialists who will be able to implement your product’s functionality just the way you intend is quite a meticulous and time-consuming process. Check our in-depth overview of the dedicated team model and its benefits that will help you out with this question.

How to create a social media website like Facebook: crucial steps

When the target audience is defined, the social media segment is chosen, and the striking web app’s name is created, the time comes to proceed to the actual software solution design and development. Explore those steps that are necessary to how to create a social network like Facebook.

Idea feasibility check

Once you come up with a clear concept, it’s vital to check the idea’s viability to build a social media platform from scratch successfully. Normally, this is performed as a part of the business analysis (BA) stage, unless you decide to skip this phase which is quite undesirable. You can conduct an idea feasibility check yourself in the course of BA. However, this is a time-consuming task. So it may be wise to turn to the services of a business analytics company or the full cycle development company like Aimprosoft that has an established scheme and expertise in idea assessment and elimination of possible risks.

Market and target audience analysis

The customer is at the heart of any social media website. So to make weight tactical and strategic decisions to satisfy your customers’ needs best and reduce extra costs on your software development, detailed market and competitive research are required. It’s usually conducted by a business analyst along with the idea feasibility check; hence, it’s highly important to engage such a specialist when creating a social media website in order to succeed.

With a clear overview of the niche you are planning to enter, the needs, expectations, pains, and other key aspects related to the target audience can be identified more precisely. The in-depth analysis of the TA is the key to a prosperous social network and higher ROI accordingly. Once such comprehensive research is performed, it’s desirable to proceed to the creation of a strategy for your product’s development.

Strategy and planning

The data collected from previous stages is the basis of your product strategy. To complete it, consider the following aspects:

design an overall concept of the product with a full set of desirable features;

form a vision of potential growth of the website, in terms of the revenue and audience;

it’s desirable to plan the expansion on other platforms beforehand, such as Google Play or Apple Store, in case you want to create Android and iOS-based mobile apps additionally, or cover more geographical zones and market segments, etc.

If a social media mobile app creation is something you’ve been thinking about, explore our comprehensive guide to social networking development to figure out the best way to start this journey.

Based on the formed documentation, chosen software vendor develops SoW (Statement of Work) and technical specifications. We at Aimprosoft, for instance, carefully drew it up during 1 — 2 weeks, depending on the size and complexity of the project.

After this, a road mapping approach is applied. It helps mark all milestones of the website development schematically. It also assists in setting time frames for each feature realization and prioritizing task implementation. The most crucial benefit of a roadmap is that it’s dynamic and allows adjusting changes in the course of building a social network website. It eases the working process for the developers and is rather time-saving in terms of project creation.

Design process

It’s desirable to opt for a comprehensive approach to the social media platform design by creating wireframes and prototypes first. The wireframe is either a low or high-fidelity static overview of your product’s interface, focusing on the basic structure of the layout, space allocation, and key interface elements. The prototype displays everything to you interactively, fully depicting the website’s functionality. These design tools help you minimize the following business risks:

To avoid frequently occurring mistakes related to social media platform design, we suggest following the tips we gathered in the table below:

Finally, keep in mind that both UI and UX have complementary nature. It’s impossible to build your own social media platform that will succeed if it has an appealing design, however poor in usability and vice versa. However, if you have a problem with a choice of appropriate design for your social media network, our specialists will help you opt for a proper solution.

Technology stack necessary for the social media website development

The choice of the appropriate tech stack to program a social network normally depends on the best-suited solution to the set requirements, the complexity of the project, and the technical skills and expertise of software developers. Let’s consider the most popular options of technologies that can be used for client-side and server-side development of a social media website.

Crucial aspects to consider when developing back-end of your social network

If you build a social media platform from scratch, you want to make it work seamlessly and lower the percentage of users’ churn. Hence, it’s crucial to consider the following aspects during back-end development.

Proper rendering

server-side rendering (SSR)

This is a more traditional and static way of website’s content rendering that may provide delayed page load up to a couple of seconds. If you are creating blogging or publishing social media platforms, such an option is the one for you as it doesn’t require a fast and immediate response between subsequent page loads.

A rendering approach is performed by back-end developers in collaboration with or without HTML/CSS-coder, with the help of either Spring framework, Velocity library, or other efficient Java technologies. Also, mind that unlike CSR (client-side rendering), microservices back-end architecture is not applicable for SSR; hence opt for monolith architecture.

client-side rendering (CSR)

If you want to make a website like Facebook, this type of data displaying is more suitable. Such an approach is more dynamic and responsive and allows creating a network that will provide you with fast website rendering after the initial first load.

CSR solution is conducted by front-end developers and is normally implemented in JavaScript with the help of AngularJS, React.js, or Vue.js frameworks. Depending on your requirements, both monolith and microservices back-end architectures are suitable for your website if you choose CSR.

Enhancing security

Structured Query Language (SQL) injection prevention

Your users’ sensitive data, such as authentication details and credit card information, may be vulnerable to SQL injections in case of insufficient security. To prevent such malicious attacks, make sure you place a secure Java database driver with a prepared statement feature that sends the query and data to the database server separately, avoiding the intervention of such an attack into the records inside the database.

PHP database driver, for instance, doesn’t provide such protections, so developers must protect it using escape input data or some other technology.

As you can see, the choice of programming language and/or framework influence the stack of the tools that secure your product, which, in turn, should be used correctly.

protection from Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks

If your social media network doesn’t have properly secured input data validation, your website is open to XSS attacks. In this case, consider integrating input data filtration upon its arrival or encode your data on the output.

secure hosting

To make sure that your users’ data is securely stored, it’s desirable to opt for reliable, top-ranked cloud web hosting providers, such as AWS, A2 Hosting, HostGator, or InMotion.

data encryption

The integration of SSL type of data encryption is considered one of the most effective and obligatory security measures when you aim to create your own social media website. It prevents hackers from obtaining your users’ sensitive data while it is in transit.

programs update

The security of numerous websites is often compromised due to outdated software components. Always make sure that all parts of your programs are updated, whether it’s the latest version of the plugin or CMS, so that there will be no open website’s vulnerabilities for attacks.

Admin panel

This is one of the most vital tools for the moderation of any social media website that can not be overlooked. It’s a full-fledged application that interoperates with your website and aims to enhance the capabilities of your business by:

Improving performance

Horizontal scalability

The more famous your network becomes, the more concurrent workloads are running within the website. In such a case, the maintenance of horizontal scalability is a must when you aim to create a social media platform like Facebook, which can be achieved by your vendor’s right choice of load balancers.

Content delivery network

In case you aim to popularize your network not only in one particular geographical location but globally, you may boost your website performance by using CDN (content delivery network). Such a solution provides faster delivery of the content to your end-users who are located far from the hosted server by utilizing nearest or local edge servers.

Content size optimization

To optimize the work of your website, you may require software that compresses audio, video, textual, and other types of files. You may use a Gzip application that compresses and decompresses files either statically or dynamically, both improving website’s page load by almost 15%. Moreover, it’s better to store compressed files than compress them on the frontend side every time the request comes.

Making website fault-tolerant

Numerous factors may negatively affect the functioning of your website. Fault tolerance is one of the most vital aspects to consider when you plan to create a social networking site, which helps to counteract such intrusions. It may be provided with the help of such preventive measures:

enable clustering, the process which helps replicate the actions of the server in case of its sudden failure to function;

make sure you have a fault-tolerant database, which will take over the work of the main one in case of its outage;

integrate reliable communication channels which will ensure a secure and consistent exchange of data and reduce risks of connection loss;

provide database backup to eliminate the possibility of sensitive data loss;

ensure disaster recovery procedures. Such procedures will depend on whether you choose cloud computing or on-premises. In the case of the former one, you will have to enable cloud migration of data to the other region. If you choose the latter option, make sure you have a backup provider or data center in the other geographical area. Also, if you use an on-premises environment, you may switch to cloud computing in this case;

Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Deployments (CD) are indispensable practices during social media web development that enable an efficient and flexible workflow that eventually leads to faster and bugless deployment. DevOps engineers are those who provide and maintain a correctly functioning process of CI/CD setup into the development lifecycle. By opting for this approach to the development of your social media website, you may obtain:

QA and testing

The maintenance of a high load on the website, responsibility for the security of users’ data, and their payments within the network are those factors that define extreme importance to approach the testing stage thoughtfully.

Testing is conducted to guarantee that all client’s requirements are understood accurately by the software vendor. They also enable both the customer, stakeholders, and testers to track the changes within the project eliminating possible misunderstandings among the parties. Normally the following types of testing are desirable to be performed when you develop a social network:

The QA department of Aimprosoft applies the most complex approach to the choice of the appropriate type of testing set, depending on the complexity of the product and your requirements. By integrating the work of the QA team from the very beginning of the project, you potentially reduce development costs, ensure seamless work of your network, and boost its capabilities.

Testing is one of the most important aspects to consider when it comes to social media website development. Get to know the approach of our QA department towards the testing stage.

Release and promotion

To program a social network, a cycle of iterative testing procedures precedes the website’s final release. After this, we at Aimprosoft freeze code and continue fixing bugs for 2-3 weeks without amending the product. To prevent possible business risks related to the release, it’s also desirable to:

Once your social network is approved for the actual release, it’s time to implement the marketing strategy for promoting your website. It may include:

Once you have launched your website, it’s crucial to monitor its performance and your users’ behavior to update it further accordingly.

Having reviewed the major points that should be considered in the course of such product development, let’s figure out how much does it actually cost to code a social networking site from scratch.

Social networking site development cost estimation

To define an approximate cost that is required to start your own social network, let’s consider a similar product that we created called Chattlez.

Chattlez included basic features inherent to a standard social media website; we also put special emphasis on the responsiveness of its design, which was not that common back in 2013. The concept of Chattlez was to combine a product aggregator with a social media network and convert them into a marketplace enabling people to communicate and make purchases. It took almost 5 months to develop a social network like this, and it allowed us to come up with a rough formula to estimate both time and cost for the creation of social media websites.

Book a consultation with our specialists, and we’ll discuss your idea.

When you build your own social networking site, it’s necessary to develop an MVP first to identify the product’s weaknesses and exact enhancements to invest further. The following core for any social media network features was implemented into Chattlez:

The following team stack is normally required if you decide to create an MVP first:

Once MVP goes through the first wave of critical testing by your potential audience and the feedback is obtained, you may proceed to the development of the full product with the following additional features that were included in Chattlez as well:

If you opt for the creation of a full product straight away, you will need such an approximate stack of software developers to code a social networking site from scratch. It may vary depending on the project’s complexity and the launch date:

We used our expertise of Chattlez creation to prepare a comparative table below of approximate time spent to start a social media platform, both MVP and full-fledged version of the product.

875 — 1065Full product hours

1540 — 1800Business analysis + UX strategy50 — 80120 — 140Technical specification35 — 4555 — 65UI/UX100 — 140150 —180Frontend + Backend development470 — 520850 — 950QA90 — 100175 — 225Product architecture30 — 4050 — 60CI/CD100 — 140140 — 180

The above-mentioned estimated time that is necessary to code a social media platform may vary if you conduct a business analysis, all mockups and prototypes yourself, and then turn to the full-cycle development company. Regarding backend development, the most time-consuming and complex parts are related to the creation of the Admin panel and integrated Analytics, requiring approximately 200 hours each.

In the table below, we have calculated the cost to create your social network website that varies between software vendors from different parts of the world.

875 — 1065Full product

1540 — 1800USA$80$70 000 — 85 200$123 200 — 144 000Western Europe (Germany)$65$56 875 — 69 225$100 110 — 117 000UK$70$61 250 — 74 550$107 800 — 126 000Eastern Europe (Ukraine)$40$35 000 — 42 600$61 600 — 72 000

You may see that depending on geographical area, the average rate of the developers may significantly differ. Thus, for example, the whole development cost to create a social website in Eastern Europe (Ukraine) forms only 40% of the same cost in the USA.

Conclusion

The growth of users and their demands, the growing impact of social media websites on human life, and the variety of possible niches to enter are those reasons why it’s worth building a site like FB. In order to gain benefits from such a promising industry, you need to have a feasible idea, a bit of courage, and a dedicated software partner to implement the most complex features.

If you want to discuss questions about how to create a social media website, contact us, and Aimprosoft will thoroughly assist with your startup endeavor.

More than 3.81 billion people use social media currently. It means that the demand for such types of websites is higher than ever before. The deep-rooted social media websites struggle to meet the constantly growing demands of the users. Hence, the progressive vision of newly-comers can significantly contribute to the development of this sphere.

The appropriate feature stack varies depending on the complexity of the project, set of the desired features, and budget. Since there are different types of social media websites, the functionality may significantly differ. Once you identify those features that you want to include, we advise consulting with the chosen software vendor regarding the recommended technologies. The vendor should provide you with options and their comparison and then choose the most suitable software tools.

It’s always better to define what challenges may face your potential users when dealing with such a platform and what expectations they have based on their previous experience with similar websites. This will help you identify the necessary tools to satisfy your target audience’s needs and exclude unnecessary features. Also, conduct thorough research of your competitors. Identify what features help them succeed and what weaknesses they have so that you can improve them and transform them into your advantages.

One of the most important security rules to follow when you build a social media platform from scratch is that all the application’s layers should be protected from security risks identified by OWASP. Secondly, integrate into your app’s infrastructure a WAF (web application firewall). It will secure your app from outside attacks, such as SQL injections, XSS (Cross-Site Scripting) attacks, file inclusion, etc.

Another useful website security measure to follow when you aim to make a social networking site is to regularly conduct security audits of a web application code and timely updates of all software components of the website, including updates of the frameworks and libraries that were leveraged in the course of the development. Overall, these are just some of the possible ways to strengthen the security of the social media website. Generally, the Software Architect or Tech Lead working on your project designs the corresponding strategy and selects security tools and practices appropriate for your product.

For more than 17 years, Vitaliy has been exploring the IT arena, constantly expanding his skill base. Java, Python, and JavaScript are just a few examples showing his multidimensional nature. Studying DevOps on his own, Vitaliy has reached such a high level of mastership that enabled him to provide consultation and mentorship to others. He also wrote a browser chat at his leisure time that has grown from MVP into a fully functioning product. Currently, Vitaliy is deeply focused on the Security and Penetration testing phenomenons and prepares to obtain OSCP certification.

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