[rosey89]

Hi,

I am a business student from Cambridge University, I have just finished my course and want to setup my own company. I am in the very early stages of creating an idea for a new social network website, I have found a gap in the market and believe it can become a worldwide brand. I do not want to give to much away however it will be very similar to LinkedIn but specific to a certain industry. I have no website knowledge or background and I am very concerned as my whole business will be web based.

I am looking for some information/advice on EVERYTHING, costs procedures etc etc. I do not even know if this is possible.I have created protoypes on photoshop and know excatly what i want the site to look like and do. Obviously I realise i am not going to be as big as facebook/LinkedIn however i aim to take a large section of the market that i am aiming towards and we are talking hundreds of thousands.

The main features would be:

Profiles for each member with the ability to add videos pictures etc
Recommendation feature to recommend one contact to another
Contact List (Like friends on facebook)
Searches

Any advice is valuable and I hope I can turn this idea into reality with the help of you guys.

[terydinho]

Hi Rosey

You may have been better posting this in General chat - or freelancing and business, as you aren't 'looking to hire' someone at this time - just doing your research - you may get jumped upon by the resident 'looking to hire' trolls that only live in this section and get very angry with people for no reason at all

In short - what you are asking for is a custom built social network - so expect it to be a bit 'ker-ching' on the price front.

That being said - there are a handful of out of the box Social Networks now - so it would depend entirely on your idea and how that could be built. If it is a totally unique site, with loads of cool custom features, then you would definitely need a custom build, so have the bank on stand-by for a job of £10k and upwards.

But if it is more simple, with features that can be lifted from off the shelf products, then you will find your budget is more in the £3k region.

Good luck with your venture - and I hope you find the info you need here