Building the Maccabi Social Network

With less than 14 months until our own JCC Maccabi Games, (Lawrence Family JCC, and Detroit host the 2008 games which is kinda like the Olympics for Jewish Teens) I figured it was time to get into full planning mode and actually look at viable alternatives to custom development for our Social Networking platform. To give you some background into the project, after attending last years Maccabi Games in Arizona and talking with numerous delegates from other JCCs throughout the United States, it was clear that the Games lacked a clear socially participative on-line presence for competitors. Although many of the competitors have their own myspace pages, as most of them are under driving age, there is no central place on the Web that users can share their ideas, opinions, experiences, etc. It was then that I had my first revelation —the JCC should have their own Social Network. After talking with fellow delegates about our experience, everyone was generally in agreement that this would be a cool idea.

Good idea Rick. You should build it.

I thought, “Great”…

Problem: What experience do I have in building this type of application?  Answer, none whatsoever. Hmmm.. what to do now?

So that’s pretty much when I started really getting into the ins and outs of Social Media.  Ok, so back to today.  Today I looked at several sites that allow quick creation of Social Networks. (check the links for tomorrow for a couple of sites that I visited.  The concept of the site is pretty simple -  A typical social network that allows participants to build friend lists, share text, audio, video, participate in forums all for up to 1500-2500 users (potentially many more users if future hosts decide to utilize our social network), depending on how many athletes we’re hosting next year. Onesite.com looks pretty interesting.

ONEsiteis all about online communities. Our social network software platform includes built in blogging, photo and video sharing, messaging, forums, groups, and chat. Small groups, clubs, organizations, teams, families, fan clubs, and more can create their own online community with our basic tools for free. The network is customizable. Our easy-to-use tools mean anyone can create their network without knowing HTML or any programming. - blurb from onesite

The only problem is that there will be a recurring monthly cost that we won’t want to shell out. Although I haven’t tested the application, from a practical perspective it looks like something that would fit our requirements.  Tomorrow I’ll start looking at open-source applications.

Posted by Rick Garcia in Web Design, Development