You may also want to consider ning, which is a free ASP that allows you to create your own SNS site. You are limited to the applications that they offer but they do a fairly good job with what they have and they are adding things all the time. It's worth a look at the very least.

Links:

• http://www.ning.com/

posted July 29, 2007

I'd be happy if I could follow the development of your idea, primarily because I think websites focused on children have to have a better overall usability (closer to their thinking). I will be interesting to see how you combine/addapt the social features with childrens' perception and requirements for security - you have to pay extra attention on this aspect, similarly to what the guys grom webkinz did.

Links:

• http://www.webkinz.com

posted July 29, 2007

Have you considered Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0? A lot of functionality for SNS is provided out-of-the-box. Furthermore, there are a lot of hosting providers where you can get SharePoint as a service

Links:

• http://www.microsoft.com/sharepoint

posted July 29, 2007

Try Ruby on Rails for your proto needs. It will help you jumpstart on the functional side and then you can move to the UI element later ( which will be quite imp considering the site if for kids)

posted July 29, 2007

I suggest you give Tim Bednar a call. He's been building social networks for non profilts for some time now including all the things you mentioned. Tim's a great guy, an excellent designer as well as developer and I personally recommend him. He can also recommend (and develop) using open-source technology, which will keep your ultimate deployment, licensing, support, and maintenance costs much lower than with some of the big-dog services like Lotus or IBM (which, arguably, often don't understand the social networking space like the open source people do — after all, open sourcing is itself a form of social networking).

Regards,

Rich

posted July 29, 2007

It depends on what technology you've chosen to develop your site, say if you want to develop it on .NET you should use VS.NET 2003/5 ...

By the way, develop a social network site based on new idea of establishing and managing social networks. Would it be interesting for you to evaluate collaboration? If yes - send me an email - vitali@interece.com

Regards,
Vitali

posted July 29, 2007

You might take a look at Drupal. It is a robust, mature open-source content management system with a heavy focus on community-driven sites. It has built-in support for most of the features you mentioned. It has an excellent add-in architecture too.

There may be quite a bit of work on the presentation side to brand the site, so if web design resources are scarce this can be a strong detractor.

Links:

• http://drupal.org

posted July 29, 2007

With over 20 years in the technology business, the best value I've come across is to host your domain with Godaddy.com on Linux. Hosting plans start at $4.00 per month. Then, install Joomla or comparable open source Content Management System (CMS) through Godaddy's Metropolis feature. There is no extra charge.

You can then either install additional open source applications from Metropolis or get free or low-cost Joomla extensions which are listed at Joomla.org.

Also, with this solution, minimal technical knowledge is required to install and maintain the site thus minimizing costs for expert technical resources.

posted July 29, 2007

I'd suggest that you evaluate ExpressionEngine. It is a very powerful CMS built with expansion in mind.

The system has modules for wikis, forums, photo galleries and whatever isnt there, you can build yourself. There is a very active community and many high profile sites use EE to run their stuff.

It requires PHP and mySQL, both of which can be had a lot cheaper than ASP.net and others (granted, I'm talking initial cost, not TCO)

Links:

• http://expressionengine.com/

posted July 29, 2007

I am as excited as you are about this market. I have developed and published the first phase of our kids community called eKidPix.com. The balance of the functionality will be completed over the next 4 weeks whic will include chat and IM. Check it out.

Links:

• http://www.ekidpix.com

posted July 29, 2007

From your description it sounds like you will be creating alot of customized code to satisfy your business need. There are a number of open source "Starter" packages that you can bend to your needs, possibly saving some development cost but the best one would depend on the details of your requirements.

Either Java or .Net will be satisfactory for development if used properly. Beware of hidden costs, especially with Java. A platform composed of multiple vendors can take a lot longer to pick out the pieces you want than a more comprehensive (and more obviously expensive) one such as .Net. In both cases, do not minimize the costs of testing and code verification tools or of developers who will get the job done on time and budget.

posted July 29, 2007

I would agree on checking out Ning - www.ning.com. Very well funded startup launched by Marc Andreeson, the founder of Netscape. I'm a user of both Drupal and Joomla and they aren't as elegantly coded or constructed as Ning. Fine for my personal, small sites, but I suspect I'd have a scalability problem if I were trying to build something enterprise class.

Links:

• http://www.ning.com

posted July 29, 2007

www.phpfox.com is a popular a base you can work with not expensive and ahs add-ons available.

Another similar one is www.dzoic.com

posted July 29, 2007

Hi Greg,

Dolphin fits almost all your requirements. Version 6 is going to be released soon.

Regards,

Tedi

Links:

• http://www.boonex.com/products/dolphin/features/

posted July 29, 2007

My suggestions are:

1-To use NING which is free, easy and the best of all, it can be innerconnected instantly with other Ning Networks; I mean you can affiliate to the Ning Networks which you want, using a unique combination
Ning's user+pasword.

2- I'm actually evaluating NEXO , a free and easy Online Groups Developer, which I am using to design my ESL (English As a Second Language) site and some Business Statistics notes por my university students.
As far as I used , I recommend it. Nexo offers predefined templates to develop: a) Family Sites, b)Team sites, c) School Sites (e-learning) and d) Group Sites (Business, Non Profit and Fan Clubs).

3- Networkcreators, a Ning Network Developer Community, which I like very much and I am also a member.

I hope it is useful to you... Diego A. Peris , http://www.linkedin.com/in/daperis, daperis1@gmail.com

Links:

• http://www.ning.com/
• http://www.nexo.com/
• http://networkcreators.ning.com/

posted July 29, 2007

FIDO B.V. has development a platform aimed to do just that. The FIDO system is for example used in the dutch online platform, Yourscene, which currently consists of 9 different websites for 9 different target groups. Yourscene is now part of the Ilse Media Group.

Links:

• http://www.yourscene.nl
• http://www.partyscene.nl
• http://www.fashionscene.nl

posted July 29, 2007

While not the complete package you need for the actual hosting of the content (there are lots of places where you can do that for free or at nominal cost), we have a system that does all the discussion/viral marketing/stats/contact management etc that sits behind making a social network 'social' and its ready for market. If you or anyone else would like a preview, please drop me a mail "garethochse AT gmail DOT com" with the header 'Buzzfuse" and I will give you an invite to the beta this week.

posted July 29, 2007

Ning seems like the easiest to get rolling with but Techcrunch recently ran a comparative piece which I'd suggest you review to see what best fits your needs and to get a better handle on what the different platforms are NOT able to offer.

Links:

• http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/24/9-ways-to-build-your-own-social-networ...

posted July 29, 2007

LAMP Server + Joomla would be the best all around solution for now. WJ

Links:

• http://www.mindtaffy.com
• http://www.Acrobat-3D.com

posted July 29, 2007

Greg,
Great question! Bad solutions abound.
Yes you can buy something or build it.
The problem is when you grow, how will you handle the growth?
Who will write that code, how will you maintain it and manage it?
Will it have interconnected messaging capabilities, maintain spam filters and block out the malware, hackers and in some cases bad people from accessing this kids site?
The answer of course is in the details, all the answers are reaosnable and possible but some are more practical to your need, which is really what you are after I presume. But know what you want to have in the end is 85% of the battle to designing it upfront.
Don't be fooled by price, you know what you get for free and the high prices some people ask are never worth it in the end(unless you really want to be a passenger astronaut).

posted July 29, 2007

I'd suggest the following CMS (content management systems) to look into:
1. Joomla (robust and full of support for it)
2. Drupal (drawback is support for it-not as much)
3. Mambo (includes everything and fantastic support)

I'd also mention Geeklog as well. Take a look at the Open CMS site for more ideas of what's out there.

Links:

• http://www.opensourcecms.com/

posted July 29, 2007

Greg, I was in the same position; I created a system for the company I run, Sports Business Simulations, using an ap called "KickApps." I produced the SBS Social Network. Check the link below..

Links:

• http://www.sportsbusinesssims.com/sbs-social-network-system.htm

posted July 30, 2007

My company provides exactly what you are looking for, including the flexibility for customization versus many of the platforms in the answers below. CoreSpeed is a branded online community and enteprise social media platform provider. We work with organizations looking to develop public-facing online communities and also with enterprise customers looking to utilize social media to enhance business processes.

Links:

• http://www.corespeed.com

posted July 30, 2007

Greg,
If you go on Amazon and buy 'The Virtual Handshake' by David Teten and Scott Allen there is an entire chapter on Social Software. There are many with different purposes that is why you have to read through their list and this will lead to the ones that will work best for your purposes. This book has everything you need for setting up your virtual presence on the web whether for business or for fun. You need to have it in your library. Good luck
Maureen

posted July 30, 2007

The following URL would be of help to you they are FOSS you would only need some skilled people to manage the deployment cusotmization and configuration

Redhat has released a product called mugshot and then there is pligg, drupal and a plethora of open CMS systems which can be adopted, link provided below

Links:

• http://mashable.com/2007/07/25/open-source-social-platforms/
• http://www.cmsmatrix.org

posted July 30, 2007