Questions on construction of a new software and new social networking systems like Facebook.

The "Facebook" platform is based on a set of programming interfaces along with some tools which are used to help the developers integrate the site with the open "social graph" that is collective of personal relations and other different set of information and elements like places, Facebook pages, songs, videos etc. The major such tools and programming interfaces are:

Graph API
It is the core element that created the Facebook Platform, it helps the developers to read from the acquired data and write the same into the Facebook site.

Authentication
The authentication helps the developers' applications in interacting smoothly with the Graph API on the behalf of all the Facebook users, providing them a single-sign on mechanism through the desktop apps, the entire web and .mobile.

Social plugins
Then there are Social plugins like the Activity Feed, News Feed, Like Button, Comments and Recommendations. These are for helping the developers to provide the social experiences to their users simply through a few lines of HTML.

Open Graph protocol
The Open Graph protocol help integrate the pages created by the developers into the social graph.

iframes
Facebook uses the iframes to allow the third-party developers to create their own set of applications which could be hosted separately from Facebook, but are allowed to operate within a Facebook session. They can be accessed through any user's profile as well.

Microformats
The hCalendar microformat was introduced in Facebook since February 2011, to mark up the events.

Mobile platform
The UI framework is solely responsible for the mobile website which is based on Xhp, the Javelin Javascript library, and the WURFL.

So if you can integrate all these to make a website, you can try your hands in creating something as big as Facebook. But you need to keep yourself abreast and upgrade into the latest mechanisms in order to keep up the pace.

As said earlier and I would like to add some more points to it. Facebook is a collection of PHP coded pages which are self-generating on the code.Much like Google Search engine.

It is maintained in huge database and servers. The code is self-developing and all you need to do is code that self-generating PHP coded pages. Which I think very hand given it should be handled with database and servers.

Rest of them are developed by developers by plugins, iframes etc much like a normal website, but the key to it is self-generating pages, which can load on demand.

If you wish to start the social networking from scratch then it would take a lot of time. And the amount of efforts required to monetize such platform is very high and also requires more funding for servers and programmers to maintain.

What is required?

You need one base programming language like PHP or Python or Ruby on rails. You also need a good database like MySQL or Postgres. If you only capture limited data then NoSQL database like mongoDB is worth having. After all this preparation you have to write the code and deploy it on the servers. So you need funding to buy such servers as well.

Instead of creating everything from scratch you have few options like using existing clone scripts or use opensource social networking scripts. Here are some of the clone scripts that you can check out :

1. PHPFox
2. Social Engine
3. Social Book
4. PHP Dolphin
5. PHP Shark

If by any chance you don't like to use Clone scripts then your best bet is to use some social networking script and then use that script to enhance and monetize.

Here are some of the social networking open source free scripts that you can deploy and use immediately.

1. Tent.io
2. Diaspora
3. BuddyPress (to use with WordPress)
4. JomSocial (WordPress plugin)
5. Libertree
6. GNU Social
7. Friendica
8. Freenet

Here are some things I'd like to share with you.

1. Avoid reinventing social network. That would drain your mental and financial resources. Use existing open source API and scripts.

2. Monetize your social network using viglink or skimlinks when you get over 100 users.

3. Stop spam bots as early as possible. This will in turn help you make better and strong social network.

Keep a tab on the open source social networking scripts and their community or mailing lists and you'll learn a lot. And you can also learn about how to create such social network from the start.

My question is:

If the government starts this procedure, ie creating a social networking site or anything with young Indians wouldn't it be possible to create such thing so that we can protect ourselves and let the foreigners invest in our place, it is just like a plan to make our home well and wealthy.

Great posts.
Need more ideas!!

In case of government they need to go through the process and voting for the feature and data security. In case of government, the trust with data is very less. For example, like facebook spying on users data, even government will be accused for similar action. In such case they have to be transparent about the encryption of data, privacy to the users and other features. It is definitely possible for the government to perform this. However when under government direction, such projects stall for even minor features. However programs like social seminars and workshops are often carried out more quickly than digital projects. In case of foreigners investing into india, both government based projects and private projects go through some guidelines and restrictions. So this topic is more into startup and legal section if I am assuming it correctly.

Being a web developer our first project is to develop a social networking site for our coaching class which was only usable on LAN network in our place.

There were four question in front of us: -
1. Which programming language we should go for?
2. How it will be different from Facebook, Twitter, etc.
3. How we will regulate speed of our website even in intense use.
4. User Interface.

Ans 1 : - PHP was not even in our mind due to bugs in it. Due to this we decided to go for Ruby on Rails with Python due to their updated framework with good speed as well.

Ans 2 : - As it was for programmers so we decided to include Youtube API which included programming videos apart from that we also used Facebook API to integrate Facebook in same site which will give all notification and messages in the same website as well.

Ans 3 : - We use latest Ruby on Rails and Python framework to give good speed to the user. For better loading time we use Javascript to implement advanced CSS and HTML codes in the webpage which will help to reduce loading time.

Ans 4 : - We came up with brilliant UI with side stacked options of controlling the website. It was loved by everyone.

Total cost of developing the site : - Rs. 0 (as it was based on local server) and took around 3 Days for all of us.

If it would have been on internet then I would have been gone for Dedicated server which will cost around Rs. 3000 per month for better speed.