In spite of the availability of numerous social networks and some of them like Facebook and My Space being insanely popular, you may sometimes feel a need to have a network of your own where you decide what features it should have and you create the community rules. And thats when tools like Ning, Snappville and CollectiveX come into the picture.

However, if you are one of those who wants more control of the site, including the branding, the domain name, the features, the design, the community rule, or even the database, the best way is to install and run a social networking software on your server.

Here are 10 open source social networking applications which are developed continiously, well-documented & offer impressive functions.

1. BuddyPress - BuddyPress is a set of Wordpress plugins & themes for converting a Wordpress MU installation into a social networking website.

2. Elgg - Elgg is a mature social networking framework which offers, Its plugin based system enables adding new features easily from a plugins database or creating your own.

3. Mahara - Mahara runs on LAMP, although Postgres is preferred over MySql.

4. Lovd by Less - Lovd by Less is among the first and only few open-source social networking platforms built on Ruby on Rails.

5. Anahita Social Engine - Anahita is a scalable social networking platform that is built as Joomla extensions using the Nooku framework.

6. Community Engine - Community Engine is an open source plugin for Ruby on Rails applications that provides the common features of social networking applications

7. Xoops with Yogurt extension - XOOPS and Yogurt are based on php and work well in the LAMP environment.

8. Dolphin - Dolphin is one of the most popular applications to create a community.

9. AROUNDMe - AROUNDMe is slightly different from the others. Instead of building a social networking site, it allows you to create your own collaboration server which enables your users to setup their own social networking site

10. PHPizabi - PHPizabi is a feature-rich open source social networking engine for creating & managing basic-to-advanced communities.