I'm starting to investigate social network software. The idea is to help people getting to know each other in my church. The following is just a first collection of interesting links and ressources.
Introduction:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Networking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network
Why Social Software is "bottom up" instead of "top-down":
http://www.darwinmag.com/read/050103/social.html
Some of the more popular examples of social network platforms:
https://www.openbc.com/
http://www.meinefreunde.de/
http://www.canyouconnect.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/
http://www.friendster.com/
tribe.net and CanYouConnect.com allows to create your own network, e.g. for a sports club or church.
Commercial Software for creating Online Social Networks (only in English unfortunately):
http://www.alstrasoft.com/efriends.htm
"Vizster": Software for visualizing social networks:
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~jheer/infovis/final/
And finally there's even an add-on to the Open Source CMS "Mambo" that provides community functionality: http://www.mambojoe.com/.
