Build your own social network using open-source social network platforms. Control your data and collaborate with your team members & customers effectively.
Overview
Welcome to another blog post in the series on Social Networking Software. In the recent past, we published a blog post, Why Your Business Needs A Self Hosted Social Network. However, in this blog post we will let you know about the top 5 most widely used open source social network platforms. In fact, open source community is so active and vibrant that you can find software related to any sect of life easily with all the documentation available. So, when we talk about the business use cases, most of the businesses tend to develop their own network whether it is related to team communication or interaction with the consumers.
Successful businesses always tend to cover every aspect and provide a complete environment that includes both working and social. Therefore, there are many free collaborative platforms where colleagues and customers can socialize with one another using business’s own hosted social network tool just like an alternative to renowned social platforms such as Facebook. We will cover the following open source social network platforms.
HumHub
HumHub is an open source social networking software. It is widely used and some with self-hosting capabilities. This free collaborative platform is highly extensible and offers rich themes and modules. It lets users create public or private spaces for any use such as any particular task base space or any other. In addition, members can leverage almost all social media actions such as they can comment, like, follow or post anything. Moreover, they can manage their profiles and can perform a global search. Moreover, this social network tool offers an online version where anyone can experience this free tool. The user interface of HumHub is very logical and users can navigate through various elements easily. It is written in PHP and easy to set up on servers. You can find the source code of HumHub on Github.
Following are the prominent features:
- Activity Stream
- Rich Dashboard
- Support For Media Files
- Self-Hosted
- Social Tools
Elgg
Elgg is another alternative award-winning open source social network platform. It is highly privacy-oriented and is being done using cryptographic techniques. In addition, it is also very extensible and exposes an application programming interface(API) for the integration with third-party apps. Moreover, there are many plugins available that extend the scope of this social networking software. This free collaborative platform offers a wide range of features such as a notification system, a cacheable system of static assets access control, file storage, views and more. The user interface of this open source social network platform is very intuitive. Further, it is also written in PHP, all the documentation is available regarding development and deployment. Therefore, you can find the source code of Elgg on Github.
Elgg has the following key features:
- Plugins
- Cryptography Based Security
- Documented API
- Self-Hosted
- User Authentication
Diaspora
Diaspora is also one of the most widely used social networking software. It is a decentralized social network and acts as an alternative to Facebook. This free collaborative platform comes with enterprise-level social features that include Mentions, Tags, Emojis, Reactions, attachments, intent-based groups and many more. In addition, Diaspora is highly extensible and offers integration with top ranked social platforms such as Twitter and Tumblr. This decentralized social network is written in Ruby, Ruby on rails along with some input from other languages such as JavaScript. Users can have comprehensive documentation regarding development and deployment. Therefore, you can find the source code of Diaspora on Github.
Diaspora offers the following important features:
- Decentralization
- Integration With Twitter & Tumblr
- Privacy-Oriented
- Mentions, Tags, Emojis, Reactions
- Self-Hosted
Open Source Social Network
Open Source Social Network is another social network tool that also comes with self-hosting and extensible capabilities. It is multilingual and offers support in many languages. In addition, this open source social network platform provides data security and integration with third-party libraries. Just like other software, this social network tool also offers some cool features such as mention, tags, notification system, block system, poke system, inviting friends and more. Moreover, it also offers a news feed, emojis and support for Captcha. This social networking software is written in PHP with a little input from CSS. Therefore, users can avail the source on Github along with documentation regarding development and deployment.
Open Source Social Network comes up with the following key features:
- Invite Friends
- Notification System
- Self-Hosted
- Multilingual
- Realtime News Feed
Learn more about Open Source Social Network
Tribe
Last but not the least, Tribe is another opens ource social network platform that comes with thread-based communication and a lot more. This social network tool offers built-in Google Analytics integration to track and analyze users’ data. The Tribe is written in JavaScript and comes with comprehensive documentation regarding development and deployment. Further, it is secure, privacy-oriented, user-friendly and offers a logical user interface. Therefore, you can get the source code of this free social tool on Github.
Tribe offers the following key points:
- Tags, Notification
- Search Features
- Self-Hosted
- Google Analytics Integrated
- Spaces, Content Categorization
Conclusion
This brings us to the end of this blog post. We have gone through widely used social networking software. This article will help you in making the right choice if you are looking to deploy an open source social network platform for your business. In addition, there are other relevant articles mentioned in the ‘Explore” section below that you can check out.
Finally, containerize.com is continuously writing blog posts on further open source products and topics. Therefore, please stay in touch with the social networking software category for regular updates. Moreover, you can follow us on our social media accounts Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.