Social networks are all the rage these days. From dog lovers to Baby Boomers, there are zillion options to choose. People gather online to gossip, share tips, recommend products, show videos, you name it they're doing it.

Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, these are the new online waterholes for people to gather and group. You are not hip and mainstream if you do not belong to at least one of them. 26% of Google search results on the leading top 20 brands provide links to consumer-generated media (CGM) or comments. 85% of students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities have profile pages on Facebook. They spend an average of 20 minutes checking it twice a day. That means marketers focused on reaching young consumers can't ignore sites like it. Online communities influence the preferences and behavior of buyers in nearly 40% of offline sales.

What to Do?

Critical new channels of media distribution, these communities sort information according to their collective point of view. More and more, online users get information about brands on these web sites. That's why MySpace, with tens of millions of engaged users, has become a valuable platform for promoting teen-oriented products like pop music. It's why Digg, which populates its site with headlines posted and ranked by a dedicated tech-oriented community, has attracted the attention of Silicon Valley giants seeking to understand trends in technology before individuals acting alone can spot them.

If you want to create your own community, for whatever reason you can think of (like making a lot of money), how can such endeavor be pursued? Do you need to hire expensive programmers to code it? Purchase costly hosting to keep all the video and content that will inundate your community? How about some FREE options? Keep on reading...

White Label Networks

More than 30 companies provide so-called "white label" social networking platforms that enable people to build their own social networks (often from scratch) and to tailor them to a range of purposes. The idea is to make the platform provider as invisible as possible to the social network's users and to brand the network with the builder's identity or intent. One group of these companies provide hosted, do-it-yourself solutions with which customers can largely point and click their way to a brand new social network. Companies of this type interact minimally with their customers and rather focus on providing the network-building tools that they demand.

Of them, the ones worth mentioning are:

Ning

Provides one of the best platform for setting up fully functional and visually appealing social networks from scratch. The standard package allows affiliates to build AT NO COST an ad-supported network with all of the features that they offer. This entails a point-and-click setup process in which an affiliate chooses a theme, tweaks appearances, and loads features such as photos, videos, groups, and blogging. Within minutes, you can create an impressive, fully-featured (albeit rather cookie-cutter) network that is ready to accept its first batch of members, which can be invited by email or Ning ID.

KickApps

Targeted more at web developers (and companies with programmers) who want to incorporate social networking features into their existing websites without going through the hassle of coding and maintaining those features on their own. You have more immediate control over header and footer code and CSS styling. Consequently, it takes more time and expertise to get a KickApps network looking good, but in the end it may very well look more seamless and professional than any network hosted on Ning. With the FREE platform package, a single skyscraper ad area is controlled by KickApps. However, once an affiliate decides to control advertising it pays roughly $2-5 for every thousand pageviews to its network, with rates decreasing as traffic grows.

CrowdVine

It provides the simplest, most basic solution for those looking to set up their own social network. The main features of CrowdVine are member profiles, blog posts, and public messaging. You won't find any rich media sharing capabilities, such as photo and video, in the basic package. The platform has appealed mainly to conference organizers and attendees, alumni (of businesses and schools), intranet users, and professionals. You can think of CrowdVine as a utility provider due to the lack of control over the look and feel of one's social network.

Take your pick

While these companies provide social networking functionality, they differentiate themselves in several ways, and a few provide unique features not found in your average social network. They claim that their experience, business relationships, and internal structure have prepared and equipped them to deliver mature products.

So if you have the social network bug, want to wet your feet and start earning millions, look at them carefully and pick the one best suited for your needs.