I am planning to launch a small niche social networking site for a post-grad student community. I plan to roll it out to select schools in the US but eventually to other countries.

As my tech skills are limited to graphic design and html programming, the biggest hurdle for me is: what platform would you recommend I use for my SNS: a private label service? opensource such as PHPizabi or even Elgg? Or outsource to some PHP programmers to start from scratch?

Thanks for your feedback.
Gareth

There are by now alot of resources available for you.

There are some free open source applications. My understanding is that it may be more work than it is worth. You'll need to keep upgrading it for security as well as new widgets, mashups and applications.

Check out 37 Signals - they utilize the Ruby On Rails software. There are some other companies out there that use PHP, like White Label Networking, Pringo Networks, Pilot Group's Social Platform, Leverage Software, and a host of others. I orginially looked at the Dolphin software. It was $600, but in the end I really wasn't impressed with the quality of what it had at the time.

Marc Lesnick
Conference Organizer
Social Networking Conference