Using "The Machine"

Thanks goes out to Sue from Pinwheel Performance for this question. Remember, I love questions and no matter how basic or complex you think it is please feel free to "Ask a Question" and I will do my best to help you out.

Question Summary: What are some low cost Social Networking solutions that include document sharing capabilities (uploading/downloading) that are good for various types of Organizations (Profit/Non-Profit)?

As with most things there are a multitude of choices.  This is even more the case for Social Networking because it is fairly new and there are a wide variety of young companies competing to capture some of the emerging marketplace.

First, what is a Social Networking Solution ? Put simply think of this as software for online communities or software that allows communities or social networks to collaborate and share information.

Social Networking services/software usually have some basic functionality like ability to display/capture information about yourself (that is user profiles), message boards/discussion groups and file sharing capabilities.  Some of the more recent functionality has been integrating blogging, micro-blogging and multi-media capabilities like video sharing.  Social Networking is a hot area right now but long term it is really about the social networking features which will inherently be put into all types of software not just dedicated "Social Networking" software.

So how can Social Networks be used in your business ? There are many ways Social Networking software and Social Networks can be beneficial.  First, let's make the distinction between participating in an existing social networking service and providing a social networking service to your customers. I will save participating in existing social networking services like LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook for another post. The latter, providing a social networking service can be a good way to give your customers a medium to show their passion for your product and/or services and interact with other customers. It is especially beneficial if your product is creative in any way, then a social network would give your customers a ways to share their creativity and ideas with others. This can build brand loyalty but also is a great way for your "fans" to sell/market your product to perspective customers.  Another great benefit is now you have a community of customers that you can interact with, that is find out what they want, need or don't like about your products and/or services.  Extremely insightful and valuable information can be discovered this way for your next product or version of a product.

So what are some ways you can "Use the Machine" to provide social networking experience to your customers or clients?  Let's review some distinct options, remember these are by no means extensive but are either services I have used or experienced.  

 

Ning -  Ning is a very popular service that let's anyone create a public or private social networking site for free. At first,  it might seem like Ning is too "Consumer-ish" that is not very professional oriented but if you look at some of the sample sites you might be surprised as to the variety and potential of the platform.  Ning has a rich set of functionality, sites can be public or private and can be branded to match your organizations existing web site.  Ning doesn't have built-in rich file sharing, files can be shared via forum posts but this probably is sub-optimal for many organizations that are document intensive. There are third party add-ons to Ning that provide file sharing capability, however, they potentially have additional fees associated with them. I would encourage folks to visit the ning.com and look at the many public sites and how they are being used.

• Popular Ning Sites

CollectiveX - CollectiveX Groupsites is less consumer oriented and more focused on providing features for companies and membership organizations. They pretty much have all the same features and more (depending on the pricing plan you buy).  Most importantly they do have dedicated file share/hosting capabilities as a core feature.  Some other interesting features are Email Alerts, so you can get notified with a summary of changes say on a message forum vs. having to visit the site directly.  I would suspect that most folks could use the a la carte pricing option or the $400 "Premium Bundle" a year plan. 

• Pricing Details
• Product Demos

 
KickApps - KickApps basically provides social networking capabilities, that is they provide a way to integrate social networking capabilities into your existing web site.  This is a different model but can be useful, especially if you already have a web site and want to have the social networking features integrated into the rest of your site instead of having a dedicated/community site. KickApps does require you to have some minor technical knowledge for the basic integration and more so if you customize it further. However, KickApps has been very successful appealing to large companies that already have established web sites.

• Pricing Details
• Product Demos

Google Groups - That's right Google... why not it's free is fairly customizable and provides all of the basic functionality.  Yahoo has a similar offering. These sites are fairly basic but could be a good way to test out whether you really need an online community/social network.

At the request of the question submitter my OSS pick:

Drupal - The open-source content management system would easily qualify as the best way to host your own social networking site.  Drupal has a huge community of developers who have created all sorts of capabilities which easily allow Drupal to qualify as "social networking" software.  I wouldn't normally include software that you are required to host yourself so did want to mention the hosted "Drupal" service at bryght.  Also check out acquia which provides a commercially supported Drupal based products.