• 09/28/2008 - My Lovely Wife Lou is Pregnant
• 12/14/2007 - ArtistServer News and a new site: FreeMusicLicensing.com
• 09/18/2007 - AritstServer and ToneThis Serve Up Indie Ringtones
• 09/11/2007 - Running LightTPD and PHP on Windows
• 09/06/2007 - Compete.com -vs- Alexa.com - Comparing Website Rank
• 08/29/2007 - HostMySite.com Limits ColdFusion, Does Not Tell Customers
• 08/14/2007 - New Song: Chocolate Rain - Sonic Remix
• 08/03/2007 - If You Use Open Source, Leave the License and Credit
• 07/31/2007 - Add Links to Profiles on MySpace, Facebook, and More
• 07/23/2007 - SocialNetwork.in API Promotes Cross Site Networking

As a followup to yesterday's post, where I announced the plans for SocialNetworkServer.com, I feel it would be a good idea to cover some of the competition in this space.

Obviously, all the top social networks are competition, although I'm sure many users of the current social networks will continue to experiment with other sites and services as they go online. This current wave of social networks is loosely called Social Network 2.0. While we can't ignore these sites, they do not (yet) provide a service for launching social networks.

I've collected a list of a dozen companies who either currently provide a social network service, or some form of community platform. I'm sure there are more, especially when you consider how many open source content management systems have evolved to be social platforms. Again, this is a competitive group to be aware of, but the soltuions lack the 'service.' You need people, a great network, the fastest hard drives, a load balancing system, etc - if you don't, then your social network will not scale nor will it stay online, and you'll find yourself working on administrating a site instead of having fun with your social network.

This brings us to the actual group of competitors of SocialNetworkServer.com - each of these offers similar things as my platform, although, none are using the idea of a network of networks with shared resources.

• CommunityServer.com
• CollectiveX.com
• CrowdFactory.com
• FiveAcross.com
• KickApps.com
• PeopleAggregator.com
• PHPfox.com
• SelectMinds.com
• SmallWorldLabs.com
• SocialPlatform.com
• SpartaSocialNetworks.com
• Wetpaint.com

A few of these are not providing the services aspect, but only the solution as explained above. I've added them to this list since they could very well add the services portion of the pie, and elevate themselves to become a greater competitor. In particular, PeopleAggregator.com.

If you feel there are others in this space, let me know, I can add them to this list and to the one on http://www.socialnetworkserver.com/about.htm

BTW... it's my birthday tomorrow :)