Social Networking APIs for PHP

Question

Good Morning SO Campers,

I'm interested in developing a social networking site. It will be run on a Linux dedicated server and must be written in PHP.
The site functionality will be a cross between FaceBook, Myspace and Yahoo. Specifically, the site needs to offer:

• The ability for users to obtain a free email address.
• Instant Messaging
• RSS Feeds for Weather, News Etc.
• Member pages where they can send/receive emails, maintain their own profile etc.

Instead of building this solution from scratch, I'm seeking input as to the types of APIs, plugins, modules that are available to cobble this solution together.

Thanks, in adavnce, for your help and insight.

Answer 1

Check out Elgg.

Elgg is highly extensible and has a good array of plugins already written for it.

Answer 2

See also SocialEngine

Answer 3

You can also consider CMS systems, which have Social Networking components/extensions. E.g. Joomla has JoomSocial. I am also sure that most of this functionality may be constructed in Drupal using its numerous modules.

Answer 4

As mentioned in another answer you could look at Jomsocial which is very good. If you are interested in a free extension to Joomla then you could also look at Communtity Builder.