The WATBlog List of Top Social Media Platforms to Roll Out Your Web 2.0 Plans
As an initiative to build on WATblog as a resource center for anyone involved in digital media and new media marketing, we present an almost complete list of all the platforms available for your social media plans. This post aims to provide you a place to start of with in terms of the back end of your web 2.0 plans. So if you are surprisingly late to get on the neo web bandwagon and build a web home that leverages on the wisdom of the crowd funda, this post is for you.
Social Networking:
A few days back, we reported on how Rediff might be launching its new social network with Sociali.com, lest it deter you even you can build a handy social network with these tools:
- SocialEngine
- phpIZABI
- Ning
- SocialGo
- Elgg
- Crowdvine
- People Aggregator
- Kickapps
- Buddypress (WIP)
- MovableType Pro
- Webnetwork
These and a lot more social network enablers have been reviewed in detail by Techcrunch, so head there to get a better idea on each of them and little more.
Blogging:
The rise of blogging has sort of defined the rise of web 2.0 in the past few years. From being a journal of daily life to information hubs, blogs have changed the dynamics of corporate communication and perhaps even altered the flow of thought leadership. And with it of course we have had an enormous flood of blogging platforms, each claiming to be better than others.
- Blogger
- MoveableType
- Wordpress
- LiveJournal
- TypePad
- Lifetype
- Blogware
- Expression Engine
- Vox
- Text Pattern
- Boast Machine
- B2evolution
Movable Type though included in social networking as well is actually a blogging platform. IT is included in both categories because its latest launch Movable Type Pro has made an effort at bridging the gap between a blog solution, a CMS and a social networking site. Read WATBlog’s view on this latest launch and how it is changing the way communities will be made and run on the web.
Social Bookmarking:
Social bookmarking has been the cornerstone in shifting the search monopoly over the years in terms of sourcing traffic. Digg, Delicious, SU have become common terms in social media lingo and have pages upon pages documenting how to strategically target bookmarking traffic. Social bookmarking has essentially followed two technically different paths in terms of its growth. One that constitutes the Digg family of democratic news and the other pure play social bookmarking based on tagging like Delicious.
Digg like:
Delicious Like:
Microblogging
Microblogging, or an SMS long blog post has caught the fancy of a lot of people over the last 1 year, including yours truly. Big names like Google and Digg have entered the market very early, and this shows the promise that micro blogging seems to hold in taking social media and web 2.0 further. Being new, we only have two platform applications available to create one of our own:
WATBlog had reviewed Laconica some while back and gave it a thumbs up then. And here is one on Yonkly.
Wiki:
From “Google it” to “Go to Wikipedia”, wikis have changed the way information is sought, collected and distributed. These days many organizations have their entire information centers built around wikis and most open source documentations are on wikis. Though there are numerous platforms available, some of the most useful and popular ones are:
There is a much more comprehensive guide to various wiki platforms at Editthis.com, and is a valuable resource page.
Forums:
Forums are one of the few relics of Web 1.0 that survived the coming of neo web. Survive would be a wrong word to use considering, forums are the original community platforms and have been since before the world saw the growth and potential of web 2.0 and the social aspect of the web. Starting of as message boards to fully functional marketplaces now, forum systems have come a long way:
The Forum Matrix to my mind is an excellent place to see reviews and opinions about these and many other platforms. Check it out at www.forummatrix.org
Word of Honour
Content management systems like Drupal, Joomla have also played a key role in the growth of social media and web 2.0. Drupal in fact goes beyond being a CMS and is a framework in itself, and is powerful enough for you to build a social networking site, a social bookmarking site, a blogging platform, a forum and even wikis.
We hope this list serves the purpose that it has been made for and comes handy for people looking at some place to start their research.
Image courtesy Calcanis.com
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS Feed OR Email Alerts!
hi, ur wrk is great. i’m working with a pr agency and have a client called Buzzar.tv, dont knw if u have had a look at the site, but its great, its like having all brands together on one site, so now if one has to go shop he can go to buzzar.tv and see what brand to buy, where is the store send the page to a friend…just wanted to share this info..check out…www.buzzar.tv
i seriously doubt it whether all these php scripts or self-service platform could help make companies social media plan successful……….though not a coder but i have installed and tried almost hundred php scripts in one month..all twitter,social networks,video sharing clones…it seemed pretty tempting in the first place to create our own social network in simply no bug amount…..but what really matters is how many people one can attract to it………today creating social network remains a domain of large companies cos small companies cant foot the bill of advertising their white label social networks……not many can depict the success of the likes of sunsilk-gangofgirls etc
a company is better off to create apps for large social networks rather and other platform than facing embarrassing situation through their own effort……social media is about going viral with the masses…and the masses in india dont use digg and wikis to research their products…..so i seriously doubt whether the above list is of any significance importance to a company’s social media plans………
@Raghav
Your point is obvious, how can any system be the sole definition of success…these are just tools people can use.. and to think just because you have a tool you can create a mega site is stupid and I don’t think I endorsed any such idea in the post…
@shruti jha
Thanks for commenting, but IMO you might want to read this before making further comments for your client