Social networking which is integral part of web 2.0 wave, as users have much more participation level in this domain along with networking that lure them more than anything. When talking about this, names that appears in anyone’s’ mind are Facebook, Orkut or MySpace leaders in social networking and all of them have big names, brand and most importantly money to pay to their developers, visualizers etc. however today one can find plenty of scripts to make their own facebook clones or myspace kinda network.

In India Agriya Infoway a chennai based web solution company provide ready made social network software called Kootali with a price tag of $247 and contains all the features you would expect in a professional social network package, friends, albums, sending messages, groups, events and more. Interestingly the company also provides other scripts as well such as social bookmarking script, video sharing software.

In a similar fashion another chennai based company i-netsolution provide commercial PHP based Orkut Clone with similar layout/ look-n-feel as Orkut is having along with admin interface so any amateur HTML developer can run it likewise to blogging software, watch the user view of same here.

iScripts.com is providing an another PHP based open source online community portal script called iScripts SocialWare with all social networking portal features with mulitple theme/ layouts along with Gift store that can support real gifts or virtual gifts. This open source script will cost you as low as $99.

Free Open Source Scripts

Inspite of all these commercially available scripts there are more free open source scripts available than commerical ones to host install them on your own servers and play with and monetize it for you own good such as PHPFox, Elgg, Dolphin etc.

MakeUseOf has published last year 5 Best Open-Source Social Networking Softwares and Mashable’s 10 of the Best Open Source Social Platforms have listed some of the chosen one among them.