Decaflon

You could always just go with (and it hurts for me to say this) Ning.

I thought about this as well as a couple other sites like it having complete customization options.

With extremely limited knowledge of php, you'll find yourself way over your head, extremely fast. Besides, there's a problem of social networking fatigue - requiring users to maintain a yet another online profile. Why join a new network to connect with just you and your friends, when they are already on Facebook and can connect with _everybody_.

Depending on the target audience, you might be able to get away with creating a group on an already existing social network.

Or at least start off from some Open Source project - there are some on Source Forge.

Wouldn't it be much easier to just start a group on Facebook? That's pretty much exactly what that function is for.

If your friends are already using something else (Facebook or MySpace) you might find resistance. People tend to go where the people are.

That said, you are going to have quite a project. If you have limited programming knowledge I think you will find that you will want features your scripts do not have, if only to keep the small amount of people you have there interested because the other sites have those features. You will always be in the position of playing catch-up because it is rare for scripts to have features the big sites being used do not have (normally scripts follow the big sites not the other way around).

Since your goal doesn't seem to be to monetize this (make a business out of it) go with something like Ning if you do not want to use one of the pre-made opens already available (like groups in Facebook).

Good luck! :)

backing up what tyme posted, cool article looking at the social development of social networks

http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/social-networks

Ning is good place but why don't you create application that retrieve the data from all otehr social net sites and user can log into any of site and view his messages and scraps from within the software window.try and create social browser not browser like .
flock

you get me ....

You could have a look at Elgg. As others have said though, it may well be much easier to just start a group on one of the existing widely adopted platforms.

You know guys, not everyone in the world is connected via facebook. My country (Malaysia) are nuts about friendster.com. If you look at the ranking, its always top 10 on Alexa (regional).

I see your requirement is quite broad.

Try the following
1. Dolphin by Boonex -free
2. PHPizabi -free
3. AbleSpace -paid

Only these 3 I considered the best out there. Scripts above are AJAXified.

But then again, you have to dive into each one of them to find what kind of feature you are looking for. My choice? AbleSpace.

This is not meant to be a smart arse question...why would you want to reinvent the wheel? What is so unique about ANOTHER networking site? I am honestly just trying to find what is new about this idea.

i'm onboard with mahesh... i'm in the process of creating a portal for the tattoo/piercing community sites out there where the user can update their profile/pics/blog/etc from one location and it automagically updates their other accounts. obviously, there's some resistance from one of the players but... they'll jump on board... oh yes... they will...

but to your original question (i stray from topic easily), with limited php experience, your best bet is to go with a solution like ning if you're looking to customize the look and feel of your individual network but... honestly... it'd be best, at least in the beginning, to create a group on an existing site that all of your friends/family are already on (also mentioned above).

doing it yourself is a pain when you know what you're doing, it's expensive when you don't know what you're doing and if it just flops you're either out all of your time/energy or a bankroll.

just my 2 cents...

why would you want to reinvent the wheel?

sometimes you just want a personal system and not relying on the current social networking sites. and maybe a site with no ads? generate income from ads? who knows. the possibility is endless when you have your own social networking site.

check out this post > http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/24/9-ways-to-build-your-own-social-network/

amazing not-to-expensive dating software AbleDating is a software developed in PHP/MySQL with which developers can easily create an online dating site with many functionality modification options. First I was amazed how good sites created with AbleDating look. It has all the features I can imagine for a dating community: video chat, voip phone, flash chat with multiple rooms, flash games, 3D chat, hot-or-not rating, forum, photo galleries, blogs, users biorhythm and many others. Features I really liked were the messaging tool (developed in XAJAX) and the mail boxes created for users. For developers is easy to customize sites created with AbleDating, because of the template system available. For developing a community, the price is low from $600 per website. This price can grow depending on the features you want but not very much.

YA EVEN I WANTED TO BUILD A SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE WHICH WOULD HAVE SOME ADS AND I COUNLD MONEY OUT OF IT PLUS I WOULD PUT IT TO SOME USE PROMOTING IT,
ITS LIKE HEY, EVEN I HAVE DONE SOMETHING THAT HAS BEEN DONE BY GOOGLE, MYSPACE ETC.

BUT I AM HAVING THE SAME PROBLEM,

I WANTED TO KNOW HOW COULD WE DETECT IF A PERSON IS ONLINE OR OFFLINE

I KNOW VB.NET,JAVA.JSP ETC

CAN ANYBODY HELP ME TOO