So, you understand why you want to run a social network. Or do you? How can running a social network help you? Why should you go through the pain of hosting, managing, and most importantly paying for your own social network, when you can join one for free? There are several reasons why you'd want to do this. I'll share the three most common ones:
1. Bring your customers closer. Getting to know your customer helps companies provide a better service. And what better place to interact with them than on the Internet. Just yesterday, I saw a local hair salon’s advertisement, which flashed very proudly, "Join us on Orkut". But why use a third-party service when you can run your own. With Elgg, you can set up your own social network and integrate it with your existing website. The Swiss watch company, Swatch, "talks" to its customers via its Elgg-powered social network, Swatch The Club [http://www.swatchtheclub.com/].
2. Dissolve physical boundaries. Doing things on the Internet has the positive side effect of eradicating physical barriers. If you have to work with physically separated people that are connected through a strong common thread, like various colleges of a university, or regional offices of a multinational corporation, a social network is an ideal extension of a bulletin board or a company intranet. The University of Brighton has several campuses all over the UK. Thanks to their Elgg-powered network, Community@Brighton [http://community.brighton.ac.uk/], the students and teachers are all connected to each other. In Colombia, the Somos Más Non Government Organization is using Elgg-powered networks to bring the various NGOs working with children and the physically disabled, under one roof.
3. Stay focused. While getting in touch with your old friends is good, the whole idea of "going out" in an online social network is meeting like-minded people. You might not realize it, but the popular publicly accessible networks put a lot of effort into making sure you meet new and like-minded people. A social network, based around a common interest, is an extension of a fan site. So, if you are a fan of Johnny Cash, what better way to meet people who share your passion for country music than with a Johnny Cash social network site. Ubuntero [http://ubuntero.org/] is an Elgg-powered network for the developers and users of the popular open source Linux distribution, Ubuntu.
Can you identify yourself with any of these situations?
I bet you do. And that's what this book is about. It'll help you set up and manage your own social network on the Internet with Elgg. It doesn't take much effort, but the benefits are clearly visible. You get the option to customize and brand your social network as you want. This is also helpful if you want to integrate the social network into your existing website. Depending on your purpose, a public social network might be too big. There's nothing like creating a specialized and targeted one that keeps you in-charge.