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The seemingly endless popularity of such social network websites as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter (to name a few) has a lot of companies both large and small rethinking their approach to attracting business and creating a buzz in the perpetually changing online marketplace. The question on the minds of many entrepreneurs these days is how they might go about creating a social network website for themselves. Before you can answer that question though, it is beneficial to first take a serious look at the benefits for your business. Ask yourself these two key questions:

Have you identified a targeted niche that is not well served in the current social networking environment online?
Think seriously about why you feel you need a social network. There’s quite a bit of competition in the social networking biz. Unless you have come up with a seriously innovative idea and have some financial backing, you may need to spend a bit more time in the planning stages. If you have a great idea, some money in the bank and you’re feeling a little froggy, then go right ahead and get to hopping my little green friend.

Do you have the time and resources available to invest in creating a social network website?
In the early stages of development, this kind of site will take a bit of time and money. Be sure to look realistically at your ability to invest both or you might end up wasting time and money.

Once you have given yourself an honest answer to each of these questions you will have a better overview of whether you should create your own site or if you should simply integrate the existing social networks into your overall plan of action.

Developing Your Idea

Should you decide to move forward, working through your idea is imperative. Remember to consider every aspect of your site. Make sure there are a number of ways for people to network and communicate with other members. Come up with lots of different activities members might benefit from. Make certain that you’ve incorporate the features your users need to navigate the site. Keep in mind that working from the ground up is essential. First incorporate the features they need, and at a later stage, you can add features that might make the site more exciting. During this development state, you may want to visit and join other budding social networking sites to get some ideas for your own endeavor.

Finding a Design Company

Once you have developed your idea a bit, the next step is to talk to a good design company that has some experience with the code behind social networking sites. Your ability to write code shouldn’t hamper your efforts to translate your ideas into reality. Talking with a team who has handled the technical side of this process for other sites is the only way to succeed. After all, with so many social networks entering the market, a well-designed site is imperative, and the only way to ensure you get what you’re looking for is to talk with project managers from a number of different design companies and get comprehensive proposals from each. Many companies employ experienced social networking designers these days who are familiar with the intricate coding necessary to protect member privacy. As you talk with each company, you’ll need to look carefully at the make-up of their team. You simply cannot build an effective social network without a team that includes a project manager, a graphic designer, and both a front end and back end developer. The proposals should be very detailed, and all of them should have user-centered design at the forefront of the project. Any team will look at design and functionality well before the testing and launch stages.

As you meet with your team, you may be asked about custom designed software versus commercially available applications. In most cases, it is in your best interest to move forward with software that has been designed to meet your needs. That not only gives you the originality you crave, but it also can help to make certain that your members get the functionality you envisioned as well as some measure of control over both the design and the layout of your site.

As you begin the process, you should probably note that the social networking market is growing at an amazing rate, so time is of the essence. With that in mind you will need to get your idea from the napkin to the ‘net as soon as you possibly can if you decide it is viable. Otherwise, by the time you argue yourself into action you may have already been passed up by some bedroom bound teenager with social anxiety who spends his weekends writing code.

Unless of course you are a teenager with social anxiety, in which case you should ignore the last paragraph entirely.