Kootali is essentially a Facebook Clone which enables anyone who wants to to create a customized social networking website of their own, based on the same structure and with the same features that you will find on the popular site facebook.

You don't need to have any previous knowledge and you won't need to do any programming or anything like that, you just have to use the control panel that they provide to customize every aspect of your site to create a new social network either for your area or for your market niche.

Here is my pick of some of the best features that you have with this facebook clone script. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list of features which you can go to the Kootali website to find, but just to give you an idea of what it is all about:

•  Simple to set up, with the option to get the installation done for you if you prefer.
• An 'invite friends' function for members, which is important for building up your membership
• Privacy controls allow users to choose how much or how little of their personal information to display.
• Drag and drop feature for members to easily customize their profile page.
• Editable feeds for members to keep track of what their friends are doing
• Network Categories to build a separate social network for work, family etc.
• Market place, events and groups just like facebook.

There is a good range of professional design templates so that you can get the look and feel that you want for your site, but they aren't cheap ($100-200) considering that the script itself is $217 and another $199 if you want to remove their copyright from the bottom of each page.

Overall I would say that this is a good quality script, but when everything is taken into account you will need to invest quite a lot of time and money to get it going compared to other types of website and other scripts that are out there (see links). Given the high value of successful social networking websites it may be well worth all the time and money that you put in, but you should be aware that this probably isn't suitable for a casual enterprise.

On a related note you can also make money from making your own facebook apps without needed to do any programming or have any kind of technical knowledge, or you can also make iphone apps with a similar tool.