Which Social Networking Platform is Best?

I have been experimenting  with a couple of Social Networking platforms to get an idea of what’s out there. It should come as no surprise to learn there are several hundred, if not thousands of social networking solutions. To test fairly and thoroughly you’d need to set each social network up fully, populate it with content, set your membership levels and market it, in order to bring in people and grow it. More on that a little later, however I thought I’d share my thoughts on what I’ve looked at so far.

My findings are a summary and my opinions… the strength of any social network is the community that evolves and grows around it as well as the content. If you opt to have a forum or group set up, then having users generate content is a must.

Social Sam: A Private Social Network Membership Site for Business

The first social networking site I signed up for is called Social Sam. Social Sam markets itself as a private social membership site, or Networking Membership Software. It’s key differentiator is that it’s designed from the outset to enable people to make money from their social network, unlike most other social membership sites where making money is an afterthought at best, limited, or simply frowned upon. It didn’t take me long to set up a bare bones social network on SocialSam. Because the platform was new (they launched in June of last year and I signed up in August or thereabouts) they were still building and fixing bugs. When I signed up I was incredibly excited. There is no denying that Social Sam is one of the least inexpensive to set up and get going with. It is less complicated than Ning, and also geared towards businesses. It was created by George Tran who created 1Shopping Cart. It starts at $8.00 monthly for 0-100 members rising the more members you have after which you pay a percentage per member.

Some of what Social Sam includes:

• Forums and discussion groups
• Recurring billing options
• e-course content distribution
• An article management system
• A content management system
• A shopping cart system
• A streaming video training section and support.

and so much more. Frankly, compared to several others I looked at, it’s  the most robust and… dare I say it inexpensive solution at least initially. The most attractive thing about it was its focus on business – and social media. It had social currency as one of the foundational drivers, which I thought set it apart from many.

Why bother looking at other solutions?

That’s what I did. Why? A few reasons which, in the big scheme of things, might not seem that great but mattered to me at least at the time.

I got tired of the bugs. Because it hadn’t been long since it had launched, I found the system very buggy and after a while just got fed up with them, even though the forum was quite good at looking into them.

I found the interface annoyingly clunky and hard to navigate and set up. The content needed editing in several places, and even though I was only paying $8/month I found it grated. It always felt as if everything had been rushed out really quickly.

It was hard to interface between SocialSam.com and SocialSam.net (the support area).

It wasn’t obvious how to import my existing blog into the SS network and many other things couldn’t be imported either. That mean I’d have to recreate blogs and keep everything within the network.

You couldn’t import (as far as I was aware) your existing social network members from Facebook, LinkedIn or even your list. That wasn’t such a biggie, but it did make it feel as if integration (which is what social networking is partly about) was low down on the list.

None of the above was enough to completely discourage me though. It was something else entirely.

Now, to be fair Social Sam does offer a consulting option. For $500 Social Sam offers you a consultant to work with you to get your foundational network set up and running. I almost took up the offer, but declined at the last minute. Reason – I didn’t feel I was clear enough about my strategy for the network. And I hadn’t sorted out who was going to create the content on an ongoing basis. Unless that is clear, I felt there was a risk of setting it up and leaving it.

Second Thoughts

What made think twice about Social Sam (and stop my building of my network on the platform) was the membership billing option.

It was great that had one. In fact, that was one of  the main reasons I signed up. The problem was that to use PayPal with the membership site, it was going to cost me $60/month just for that, because it required another PayPal option.  In my opinion $60/month just for the billing (until you have a few thousand members) was a bit more than I was prepared to pay. It turned me right off because I felt this should have been upfront, you only find out about it when you go to set up the recurring billing option.

Good, Bad or Indifferent?

I may still continue with Social Sam. It’s not particularly pretty (you have to add that yourself) and I couldn’t get them to show me relevant examples of sites built with it for inspiration but if you are looking for a social membership networking site, it’s worth checking out. And if it’s less hassle to set up and looks less clunky I might well come stay with them. For now I am still undecided. Paying the consulting option didn’t faze me as much as the $60/month recurring billing cost I’d have to pay. Of course, you’d have to build that cost into what you charge your members at the higher levels of membership, however it would still be a loss leader for some time and so I had to rethink.  Oh, and the affiliate option wasn’t working when they said it was… right now it’s coming soon. This review is my own by the way…as are all  unless I say otherwise.

Social Networking isn’t free

Don’t expect any decent social network platform to be free…most of the good ones come with a price tag of sorts. If you’re looking for free stick with Ning. Even Facebook is going to be charging soon.  Given some of the stories about Ning and user content, I’d be wary of any social network where you don’t have total control over your content. With Social Sam at least you have that, plus you can even sell content on your site.

Social Sam has a lot going for it, and is probably worth a second look. And let’s not forget that building any social network takes a large investment of time, which I don’t have a lot of at the moment. I am considering two other social networking platforms. I’ll write more on them later.

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Tagged as: monetized social networks, Social Media Networking, social networking, socialsam, what's the best social network