JomSocial was launched in 2007 by Slashes and Dots Sdn. Bhd., a company based in Malaysia. The company started by developing applications for PalmOS. After one of its products won the Palmsource Enterprise/Productivity Award in 2004, the company began developing components for the Joomla! content management system. The Slashes and Dots are also the developers of NiceTalk, MyBlog, JomWiki, and JomComment.
JomSocial is a commercial Joomla! extension. According to the license agreement, modification of the source code by developers is allowed. However, any form of distribution requires permission from Slashes and Dots (http://www.jomsocial.com/company/license-agreement.html).
JomSocial can be purchased through the website (http://www.jomsocial.com). The standard version, which comes with a link back to JomSocial, is $99, and the professional version, without the JomSocial link, is $149. You can also obtain a trial version for $1 for 30 days, and pay for a full version after the trial period. The product features vary based on the type of license purchased. You may visit the JomSocial website for updated fee and license agreement information.
After a few years of development, JomSocial has become one of the leading Joomla! social networking extensions. In May 2010, JomSocial was recognized and honored as the best Joomla! application at the 2010 CMS Expo. It is a fully-customizable component, with the ability to:
Create and manage your own profile
Add applications to your profile
Integrate with other third-party components
Establish a friend system and send private e-mails to friends, invite friends to join the network, and connect with others within the network
Set up privacy settings for your entire profile and/or applications
Integrate other notable social networking sites like Facebook, and connect to Twitter and pull tweets from your Twitter account into your JomSocial profile
Create photo albums and video archives—users can also make comments about your media
Tag photos in your album
Archive member activities
Through the use of integrated third-party applications for Joomla!, JomSocial can be extended to include:
Twitter feeds
Blogs
Event listing
Forum posts
Google ads
Another great JomSocial feature is the ability to create groups.
Groups can have their own pages
The owner of the group can set the membership access level (private or public)
Group bulletins can be created
Users can subscribe to group activity streams
JomSocial provides all of the features necessary to create a social network around vibrant communities.
JomSocial has been adopted by several Joomla!-driven websites. It has become the preferred social networking extension for Joomla!. The newly-designed LINUX.COM uses it for its Linux community, as shown below:
The gibLink website (http://www.gibLink.com) is a social networking and marketing site that uses JomSocial for business connections and product promotions. A sample of the gibLlink website can be seen below:
http://www.onlineradiostations.com is a radio station aggregator. This website allows users to share their favorite radio stations and other interesting facts about themselves. A sample screenshot from this website is shown below:
http://www.backtonormandy.org is a website dedicated to D-Day. Users can share their stories, pictures, audio clips, and videos about their memories of Normandy. Click on the PEOPLE link from the website's home page, to see JomSocial, as shown in the following screenshot.
