Building a Community website

A social network service focuses on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. Most social network services are web based and provide a variety of ways for users to interact, such as e-mail and instant messaging services.

Social websites are ideal for groups of people who are connected by a common interest and need to collaborate. Instead of sending email back and forth, a social website can be used to centralize the knowledge of a group. Because the social website can be edited by anyone with the proper permissions, you can keep everyone in your group up-to-date and actively involved.

These tools are for creating social networks and communities.

• Add social interaction to your Web application and Web site quickly and easily
• Provide a space on your Web pages for people to do things together
• Enable users to poll, debate, question, leave links and search

Bring viral social growth to your website

• Anyone can join your site with one click.
• Visitors can evangelize for your site by inviting their friends and publishing their activities to their social networks.
• Social gadgets will keep these visitors more deeply engaged with your site, and with each other.