Author: Ron McNeil Article: If you are planning to build a social networking site then you must probably be thinking about the pros and cons of using custom social network software instead of using commercial social network software. When building a social networking site, you have to consider the advantages and the disadvantages that there may be when using a custom social network software and commercial social network software. This article will help you in trying to decide whether you should use custom social network software or commercial social network software by providing you with top five advantages that you will have if you use custom social network software over commercial social network software. 1) Branding: The first advantage of using custom social network software is that when you use custom software that is specifically made for your requirements of the company then you can use you social networking website as a big branding prospect and as an opportunity to develop your own brand name. You can develop the website according to your own wished and ideas. The website can be designed in your company themes with colors and graphics that portray your yields or products. This is one of the biggest disadvantages that you have when you are using a commercial social networking program because you do not really get the facility and freedom to use your own themes and graphics. Most of the commercial networking programs would not allow you to use your own ideas when you are making your website. 2) Design and layout: The second great advantage that you have when you are using custom made software for networking is that the software is developed specifically for your company and you have the complete command over the styles, the layouts and the designs of your website. This gives you the power and liberty to organize all the navigation and utilize the design and the layout of the website to attract consumers towards specific areas. In commercially made software's you mostly do not have the control over the layouts and designs and you have to just work on the template that has already been made, pre programmed and provided to you. 3) Features: Features is one of the big and most important advantages that you have when using custom made software because when you are using software that is specifically made for your requirements then you can have all the features that you desire in your website to be built in your software without any problems but the features that you don't like and want to remove from the software can also be accomplished along with it. In commercially made software only some of the features can be customized but not all of them can be. When you have custom software then you have the liberty to decide which features to put in your site and which features to leave out. 4) Originality: One of the biggest disadvantages of using commercial networking software is that many times the site that you develop can come out and look like a 100 different website out there that are also similar in styles, out-look and features because they have also used the same software to develop their website and that is certainly not what you would want because it will not give your site the credibility that it requires. When you use custom software you will have the styles, designs and features according to your own wishes and your site will most probably be different from all the other websites. This way your site will get more noticed for being different and your brand will get publicized and the knowledge about your product will spread. 5) Compatibility: Another advantage that we see of using custom software is when we have to develop a social networking website that will be in addition to the already existing website that you might have because if you are using a custom social network software for your previous website then you will have absolutely no problem in developing the new website and mixing it with the existing website. It will not cause you any sort of problems or errors of any sorts, whereas you might have to face a lot of hard times and hard work in developing a social networking website to work with your existing website if you are using commercial software. For example a shopping card for the customers so that they can buy products can be added by custom software easily. About the author: Ron McNeil promotes social networking software to easily start a site with community software powered by WebScribble