Building a Social Networking Site Completely Unique In It's Own Way

[Souleater]

There is only so much you can do to advertise without having to use your own income to advertise on the regular. I have tried it myself and it failed because I didn't have the ability to keep up with it. As for programmers, good luck with that. Most programmers are too busy trying to hack Minecraft or Subeta, or whatever the internet craze is these days. Finding advertisers is also a pain in the ass. Think of all of the hours someone like me spent trying to put a site together, just to have it fall apart because no one followed your links or registered, and trust me, I tried it all.

Not to mention that social sites are a dime a dozen and without a majorly different focus then what is already out there, it won't make any progress and it will fail. What would a site that was made by some kid gonna do against a site that is driven by media like Facebook or twitter? No chance in hell, unless you have a good pull.

You need:
Designers
Data bases
Dedicated servers
Programmers
Intrusion protection
Firewalls
A Host
Money for the host
Money for the designers
Money for the programmers
Money for the upgrades
Money for the advertising
Money for more programming once your original codes go haywire/out of date and can't be simply upgraded
Time to screen staff
Time to screen content
Time to write rules
Making sections
Adding new feeds
Games
Attention getters
Getting approval for content that you want allowed; i.e.: adult content, stores

Unless you know what you want the end result to be and you have all of the time in the world to sit and literally devote all day to just setting the ground work, you won't be able to make it happen. And once the ground work is done and programmed, then you have to think of all of the layering and how to get people to advertise on the site and for you. There is a trillion things that go into making a site like Facebook/Myspace/Friendster/Tagged/etc. There is also the creation of original content that you have to think about.

If I were you, I would seriously sit down and look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are willing to sacrifice all of the money and time that goes into making a social networking site.