How to Start a Social Networking Site

[bronxpad]

I am thinking about starting a niche social networking site. My question is how big of a team would I need, how much up front costs would I incur and what specific coding languages would my team need to be well versed in? I'm thinking HTML, CSS, php, MySQL but are there any other languages needed for this type of endeavor ?

[MoosaHemani]

Joel, I am answering this question but to be honest this is a BIG question (I mean it) and I might miss so many points because starting a social media site is not as simple as any other business site (off-course if you need this to be successful.)

I think the question you put on the board are the secondary questions, I think the following should be your primary questions:

• What you social media website is going to do that anyone else is not doing at the moment? In short USPs?
• What niche/audience are you going to target?
• How you are planning your Return on Investment?
• What would be your promotional plan?
• How much are you ready to invest on your marketing and what kind of ROI are you going to expect from that?
• Who are your competitors?
• What you competitors are doing in the market? How successful they are?

I am missing question I know but these questions should come before you should ask for how many staff member you should have what code languages they should know and others…

Above mentioned questions are important because I have seen many social networking websites that go fail because they didn’t plan effectively. I would prefer to solid plan the stuff and then move on the implementation part accordingly.

Best of luck!

[bronxpad]

Thank you for your response. I agree but I've already answered those types of questions and researched the competition. Now I'm onto phase two and getting ready for implementation phase.

[MoosaHemani]

Sounds EPIC! but in my opinion you at least have to share your niche and goals to answer your goals... because:

• There are pre made codes for social networking sites already available... are you going to go with that and alter as per your requirements...
• What special feature are you going to make public..
• Will it be mobile friendly?

these are few questions.. and on basis of that one will be able to answer about the total players in the team what should be their skill set and all!