Thoughts on Social Networking

[Hammy Havoc]

Howdy,

So, I'm laying here in bed, been up all night, it's about 6:28, I've been attempting to integrate a new social networking script into my site yet I have been seriously underwhelmed by most offerings, the opensource still remain the best yet are rather lackluster in parts.

Is anybody else running a social network currently?

Here are my thoughts:

PHPizabi - Underwhelming, not many features, nothing to make users come back.

Elgg - Very good, lots of plugins, active forums, peculiar skinning system, anybody know how to do tiled backgrounds? I've never had a problem but the CSS is in several files and it appears to need each module skinning individually as well.

PHPFox - Quite frankly unimpressed considering how much money I spent on it, very easy to break whilst modifying or even enabling new plugins.

Handshakes - I testdrove this on a friend's server, absolutely terrible considering the price, buggy as anything, half of the features don't work and are halfbaked, not very pretty, overcomplicated frontend for users

Insoshi - Comes under the same category of PHPizabi

iSocial - Too basic, same as Insoshi, not very easily expanded upon though

Dolphin - Although seemingly fully functional, the price tag puts me off but I have yet to look further into it.

I can moan about pre-existing scripts on the market all I want, I have attempted to make my own but it was pretty dire and very buggy so yes, they can do better than me and I'm not ashamed to admit it.

[CYTechnologies]

Dolphin from what I've heard has always been the best, I've never put one together though so I can't say.

I think there are to many social networking websites as is hehe :-)