Preface

Social networking has become a driving force on the Internet. Many people are part of at least one social network, while more often people are members of many different communities. For this reason many business people are trying to capitalize on this movement and are in a rush to put up their own social network. As the growth of social networks continues, we have started to see more and more niche communities popping up all over in favor of the larger, all-encompassing networks in an attempt to capture a sliver of the market.

In this book, we will discuss the many aspects and features of what makes up the majority of today's social networks or online communities. Not only will we discuss the features, their purpose, and how to go about building them, but we will also take a look at the construction of these features from a large scale enterprise perspective. The goal is to discuss the creation of a community in a scalable fashion.