Online social networking sites - like friendster and myspace, now boast membership in the 10s of millions of people, from around the world.  This means that people are increasingly looking at the web as a place to interact, above and beyond simply reading text and looking at pictures.

I'm going to be quick and state something obvious to ardent fans of this CMS, and inspiring to those considering using Joomla:

Joomla lets you add communication functionality to it, as you see fit.

Now, when we're talking about enabling websites to be places for people to meet each other, communicate about common interests and so on, J! is particularily positioned to do this in a way that is contextual.

Depending on how well you, as the site developer, understand the communicative needs of your constituents, J! will be flexible enough to let you choose how to build a system to easen their dialogue, beyond text and imagery. 

Joomla is super cool in letting you pace the development of a site in-sync with the technical understanding and communicative requirements of your site members.

Asides from the web 2.0 status quo that is advocating cutting edge solutions to increase communication between web users, a lot of members of your website are people who probably uncomfortable with learning new ways to communicate in order to use the web.

The large online 'social networks' out there will take some time to school Web users on the multi-media communication capabilities of the Internet, and in this time, you don't need to rush out and try to emulate their cutting-edge whizbang... 

Comments (7) >>

Emulation
written by Steven, May 04, 2007

Well, even if we don't intend to emulate all of the whizbang feature built-in to MySpace et. al., I would still be extremely interested in your opinion on the modules, components, extensions, etc. needed to build a well thought-out social community. That's probably a big-ask, but are you willing to take it on. I'm going through the process right now, but I'm a newbie to Joomla and am having to simultaneously go thru a significant learning curve.

Great idea...
written by Qasim, May 07, 2007

Thanks for your comment steven - hopefully I'll find the time this week to whip up a list of components I'd recommend offering a decent base of social networking tools... possibly with individual reviews following through the next week...

Just don't recommend Community Blunder
written by JoomlaWastedMyTime, May 11, 2007

Joomla does not have a viable social networking component yet. If everyone is banking on the folks at Joomlapolis to come through, the CMS is headed for disaster. I have been giving Joomla a good hard look the last few weeks, but I'm thinking of moving on. Two main problems.... Community Builder - 5 years behind the times Fireboard - 10 years behind the times, and not GA yet I have no interest in a glitchy connection to SMF for a forum solution either. Joomla is starting to look like a classic case of jack of all trades, master of NONE. The folks at Joomla should stop with 1.5, and go into maintenance mode on the core for a LONG time. They then should look into the components. This is where Joomla is seriously lacking. Thank You

re Community Blunder
written by Garth Squares, September 03, 2007

I sympathise - how come nobody has created a J! plugin/module/component to allow us to use Blogger as a blog tool within J? Or to embed my myspace or Facebook page? (I hate FB by the way)

Re: Community Builder
written by ViriiGuy, October 25, 2007

I do not know exactly on what you base the idea that CB is such shite. I am currently designing a social networking site and from what I can tell, CB works great with a little bit of behind the scenes tweaking. But then it is not like you would want a vanilla install of CB anyway. Everyone would know exactly what you were running, which makes it ALOT easier to exploit any bugs that may be in your system. My only hindrance at the moment in the publishing of my site is the current lack of blogging software for 1.5. However, if I go back to 1.0.13 then I would have my forums, blogging software and CB plus the other little modules I am planning on using. However, since I am still learning Joomla as I go and am in no rush to go live, I can happily wait on a better blog solution for 1.5.

...
written by Loic, November 02, 2007

I'm designing a social networking application, with the standard features (including profile, buddylist, events, video, music). I'm looking for the perfect CMS platform to do so, and especially to manage members relationships (invitation, targeted members lists...) I'm considering both Joomla + CB and Drupal CMS. What would be the best option ? Thanks Loic

Yes i agree
written by Jon, February 21, 2008

Yes I agree with some of the comments posted here

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