Some lessons are so good, they deserve repeating. And when it comes to open source tools, we are happy to sound like a broken record.

As you may recall in Moshi Moshi, we sang the praises of an open source social network called Insoshi. There’s actually a more seasoned contender. LovdbyLess is a free and fully customizable social networking platform, built using Ruby on Rails (an open source language and framework that is de rigeur in web development circles). Lovd developers have offered their code to anyone with an itch to socialize and the server space to host it. It comes with many of the same features and functionalities of its loved-by-more counterparts, Myspace and Facebook, such as:

• blogs with comment capabilities
• photo galleries with captions
• profile bio and information
• the ability to follow a user or “friend” them
• site search for friends
• user-to-user messaging
• profile comments
• user dashboard (recent activity feed)
• emailed activity
• flickr integration
• youtube integration

If you’re looking to stand on the shoulders of giants, okay, just a lot of other developers, here’s a good place to start.