Thanks rogerd, I think I explored them all... They either don't have all of the features or they're very expensive (5k - 25k to get started - I called a couple of the companies).
I thought of the hosted solution too but the main hurdle is once you get above 75-100 concurrent users, people complain about the speed of the software/database. I don't want to get locked into a host and have to pay exorbitant fees down the road or face an expensive migration.
Hopefully others can point to some software later, but in the meantime can someone help define exactly what a "friend" is on a social networking site (beyond the obvious)? Maybe this will help other windows admins too.
Since this seems to be "the core" of the software, maybe if I build this myself, I can add on the other features by purchasing asp scripts.
I get the concept that you can add another user as a friend and you're linked together.
How about the viral concept: do you also automatically become a friend of all their friends?
What is the main user benefit (on the site) for having someone as a friend?
As a basic schema for a table called "friends", how about:
user_id varchar (the person who is adding another user)
friend_addee varchar (the person "being added")
date_linked datetime
confirmed char(1) (addee has confirmed friendship)
To get a list of the 1st level friends for a user called 'ethan77', you could use:
