5 Best CMS For Social Blogging

So you want to own your own social networking website? Maybe you want to have a web service in place to help new bloggers host their blogs on your website or you just want to create a community around your favorite niche. Whatever the case, you won’t have to spend too much money to get started. There are plenty of content management systems around that help you start your own social network. You do want to have a plan and strategy in place, but the technology side of it has gotten easier to handle with all the open source tools that are available on the market.

If you are planning to start your own social networking community, here are 5 content management systems you should try:

Wordpress MU: the multi-author version of Wordpress is very dear to my heart. A few years ago, I started a network to allow people to start their own blogs using my host. That was based on an early edition of WMU.  The solution is much more powerful these days.

BuddyPress: if you thought Wordpress MU was great, wait till you check out BuddyPress. It adds a “social” layer over your WMU installation and makes it easy for you to grow your community and build your own social network.

Elgg: one of my favorite content management systems on the market. It’s a very powerful service that makes creating a social networking website around your niche a whole lot easier. Your visitors can have their blogs, participate in forums and groups, and do a whole lot more on your Elgg website.

Pligg: it’s actually one of the tougher content management systems to master but it’s one heck of a solution for anyone who is looking to start a social network. It certainly saves you money as you won’t have to start from scratch.

Ning: perhaps the easiest way to start your own social network these days. You can always use their free service or sign up for their premium features to use your own domain name to host your social network upon Ning platform.

Your turn: What’s your favorite social content management system?