Make Your Own Facebook

November 18, 2009 by 3 Comments

Recently, social networking sites have become all the rage. They have let people with shared interests connect with each other like never before. Some social networks, like Facebook, have grown to gigantic proportions. Social networks are so cool that people sometimes want to create their own. Do you want your own social network?

Well, you’re in luck! You can create your own social network for the lovely and friendly cost of ZERO. How? Use BuddyPress. BuddyPress is a social networking application built on the WordPress platform that allows anyone to build their own social network. Out-of-the-box, BuddyPress comes with these features:

  • A WordPress blog
  • Individual profiles for members
  • Private Message (PM) functionality
  • Friend Networks
  • Groups, which include a blog, photos and other user generated content
  • “The Wire” (like the wall on Facebook)
  • Activity/Action streams of public actions on the site
  • Forums using bbPress

What can you do with BuddyPress? How about a social network for fans of a local team, or a sports league, or a writers’ club…..or even your very own Facebook. The possibilities are endless.

Here’s a live demo of social network built using BuddyPress: TestBP

What do you think?

Filed Under: Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With:

Build Your Own Cloud

September 15, 2009 by Leave a Comment

According to the Chaos Theory, in a giant system that has lots of interconnections, even the smallest action can have a massive impact. It’s more simply described by the butterfly effect. This theory has taken its toll on the software business, thanks to the rise of open-source software platforms. Today, I learned about a move made by Backblaze, a small San Francisco-based online back-up service that can cause a similar disruption in the storage industry.

The company, whose primary business is selling online storage to consumers for a small monthly fee today, announced that it’s giving away the design of its storage cluster for anyone to use, modify and build upon. The design allows anyone to build large storage clusters -– from a few terabytes to over a petabyte. – GigaOm

That’s right, in an interesting move, Backblaze gave away their storage ‘pod’ design and now anyone, theoretically, can build their own cheap storage system. In this one move, Backblaze show you how to set up your own storage for a fraction of the average market price.

It makes me think about the rise and rise of open source software. Could hardware go the same way?

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With: