How to build a social network site?? Has the cost of building a social network site drops to near zero Yet?? My Analysis, First we had the $500 copycats, now Open Source is catching up to the Game!
PLENTY of firms are trying and wanting to profit from today's gold rush of the so-called social networking sites after the success -or at least popularity- of Facebook, Linkedin, Hi5, and other such sites like Twitter or Multiply. Making the cost of entry for new players to become lower than all time.
Facebook may be one of the fastest-growing social network sites, but its technology is far from unique. Besides all existing entrenched competitors, small software firms are also selling scripts that allow anyone to start a Facebook look-alike copy-cat website for three-digit figures. Of course, those new sites do not have any of the third-party applications integrated nor do they have any significant number of users when they start up, but those also help dilute the novelty appeal of the concept. Consider web mail: at one point all web mails were the same, until Google came along and reinvented the concept with its GMail.
And now, even Open Source software is getting into the game of offering anyone the ability to create their own social network. All bad news for Facebook and the others which will continue to see competing sites mushrooming. In short, its underlying technology is not unique at all and, being a web service in the "cloud", can be easily copied. Copycat sites are appearing all over the Internet and targeting different kinds of market niches, whereas Facebook and friends Only positions themselves as the "one size fits all" of social networks.
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