In spite of the availability of numerous social networks and some of them like Facebook and My Space being insanely popular, you may sometimes feel a need to have a network of your own where you decide what features it should have and you create the community rules. And thats when tools like Ning, Snappville and CollectiveX come into the picture.

Although there are about ten to fifteen such sites which offer you the facility to build your own social network, most of them aim at web developers and primarily offer the software platform to create the social network on it. Therefore we decided to pick the following three websites because creating a social network on them is extremely simple and can be done in minutes.

1: Ning

Ning is undoubtedly the most popular and has the largest number of social networks hosted with them. It is free to use and ad supported. You may run your own ads for a monthly fee.

Ning
Ning

It also allows you to add huge number of other features to your social network such as ready-to-use web templates, videos, RSS feeds, photo galleries, discussion forums and much more.

The primary advantage of Ning is its user-friendliness and the ease with which you can create and customize your social network.

2: Snappville

Previously known as me.com, Snappville is fairly new and based on a software platform called SNAPP which allows you to create social networks easily. Like Ning, Snappville also has nice features which include Instant Messaging, Chat Rooms, Groups,Calendar, Event Invitations and many more customization options.

snappville
snappville

Snappville is Adsense supported and also claims to share 50% of ad revenues with users. Although it may not be as user friendly as Ning, it is still worth giving it a try.

2: CollectiveX

CollectiveX focuses on creation of " groupsites " (they say it as one word ), where members can share pictures, videos, feeds and also create discussion forums and participate in them. It also allows you to add unlimited number of members to your groupsite and embed videos from other sites like YouTube and Metacafe.

collectivex
collectivex

So do you feel the need to create your own social network? Have you tried any of these sites? Would you recommend them or would you recommend another site?