Today, an increasing number of businesses are using social networking platforms to set up on-line communities. These user communities enhance brand loyalty and provide increased communication between customers, reducing customer service calls. In addition, they are a channel to customer feedback on products and services.

I recently read on ZDNet that social networking on sites such as MySpace and Facebook has become the number one Internet activity. However, as I discussed before, setting up a group on a site like Facebook leaves all control over transparency, ad selection, ad placement, features, and data in the hands of a company with a different set of objectives. (see – Enterprise 2.0 is not Web 2.0 nor is it an Oxymoron – Cross Post from Fast Forward). Instead, businesses that set up user communities own the customer data and have much more control over the tone, the topics and the content on the sites

Last week I spoke with Catherine Brown, Director of Business Social Networking at Dotster, a provider of Internet businesses services, including a “white label” business social networking platform. An 11-year old web services company, Dotster is located in Vancouver Washington, a very nice part of the world. Dotster started in domain registration and hosting, expanded into Web design, and now offers a Dotster Connect, its social media platform, . I recently wrote about their best practices on the Fast Forward blog – Best Practices for Business Social Networking Sites from Dotster.

Dotster offers a hosted or non-hosted solution. The majority of their clients use the SaaS version, which is consistent with many other firms. Dotster provides both small business and enterprise versions of Dotster Connect. The small business solution has fewer features and is designed to be more plug and play. The Enterprise edition has a menu of over 400 features including 26 languages. It allows for integration with other enterprise applications, as well as features like single sign-on. The sites can be open to search engine spiders for generating greater awareness or closed for additional security. They can also be private, invitation only or open to anyone who registers. They can also be standalone or integrated as tab on a Web site.

Here are some of the Dotster Connect features: user home pages, member profiles and portraits, friending, voting on content submitted by others, bogs, albums, group within the community, classified ads, IM, text messaging, member competitions, file uploading, and video playing. There is also a suite of admin features moderation, podcasting, user awards, events, newsletters and content syndication.

One of their clients is First Wives World, supporting women who have gone through or who are going through the process of divorce. The First Wives community is found through a tab on the First Wives World portal. Community features include blogs, video, groups, forums, friending etc.. You can select the stage of divorce to explore relevant content. You can see the most recent, most viewed, and most discussed blog posts on a variety of topics. The First Wives community is well designed.

I think Dotster is smart to combine implementation and monitoring services with their social networking platform to help ensure success in this new space.