How-To: Create and Run a Social Networking Site
February 20th, 2007How-To: Create and Run a Social Networking Site
by Greg Smith, velospace.org
Interested in learning how to start a social networking site? This article is for people looking for tips and tricks on starting their own social networking site. It is geared towards solo developers and small teams who want to start a site from scratch.
This is not a technical guide, I prefer to give advice on the more difficult aspects of running a social networking site – planning, executing, and marketing. The advice and examples I give are from my experience working on velospace.
This how-to will be posted over time in several parts. Each part will have general advice as well as examples and stories from velospace.
Outline of How-To: Create and Run a Social Networking Site
- Introduction
- Things to do before starting
- Things to do after starting
- Find early adopters
- Listen to them
- Marketing (is easy)
- Build a community
- Build a brand
- Take the experience off line
- In conclusion
About velospace: velospace is a social networking site that caters to bike enthusiasts. It combines aspects of social networking sites and photo sharing sites to bring people fanatical about bikes together. Bikes are the focus of the site. Since launching in late 2005, velospace has grown leaps and bounds. Some quick numbers (as of February 2007): 1.2gb on disk, 125gb+ of traffic per month, 500,000+ page views/month.
About Greg: I am a technology-buff-turned-law-student. Working on velospace I’ve learned alot about writing software for social networking sites and even more about scalability. The site is a solo creation, but I will be looking to bring other people on to help develop the next iteration of the site. Other projects of mine: Meta Novus, Fixed Gear Guide.