How much would it cost to hire a web developer team to build a website like facebook?

[Aj S]

How much would it cost to hire a team of developers to build a website like facebook?
How much server space would it require?
How many people would need to be hired to maintain it?

[Zack Al]

It depends on how big we are talking about. If it is something like facebook maybe more than a million dollars to develop the website and also maintain the website. I would imagine that you would probably need more than a few terabytes of data storage and some fault tolerance. If you are looking to know how many people you will need might be from 20-100 people depending on how many people actually go to your website. (coders, designers, database administrators, network administrators, help desk, and etc)

[Asad Siddiqi]

Free if you are willing to make the developer your partner in business and share your million dollar idea. If you are a developer and have heard this idea before, please thumbs up

[jdub2104]

If you know how to build relationships, you shouldn't have a problem finding people that will work with you. It's not about what you know, it's about who you know!

[juliepelletier]

If you're willing to, you can start off with open source social networking scripts, which are obviously free.

Too many people think that because a giant like Facebook exists, that it justifies trying to make it in the same market. This is unfortunately so untrue.

There are about a dozen of popular social networking sites and tens of thousands more that barely get 100 visitors.

I would recommend you try to find something with a little less competition and more potential to start with.

[numerologist]

If you are serious and thinking to build a website like facebook, I must salute your dream. Almost every popular social networking site started with a small investment but with a big thinking. Once I used to dream to build my own website but possessed very little knowledge about web building. Slowly I learn the thing and today I am the owner of a site which has brought unexpected results for me. I have written on a page of my website how I could do this.Moreover I have left some resources for all to collect from there. My site is a 2.0 site where visitors can post there comments or take part in discussion. I am sure if you visit my page and follow the links you will learn many hidden facts about web building and e-commerce.
If my answer sounds like sales pitch then also don't ignore it.There are many stuff available which will help you lot.

[dominate_01]

Depends on how much of it you can actually build yourself and how big the operation is. If you're trying to be on par with Facebook you'd have to spend millions. Facebook has dedicated servers worldwide in various countries to connect people. Each server is built to facilitate the bandwith and storage needed for all those pictures, videos, wall post and instant message chatting by millions worldwide 24/7 with no downtime. If you however start off small like Facebook did and dedicate your site to a particular small social network like maybe a sports or college club you could run the site using either a hosting service's small business or personal use subscription randing anywhere from $4 bucks a month on up to host it or use dedicated hosting for around $100 a month which will run around $1,000 a year payable upfront. Now you're probably think why would I pay $1,000 when I can pay for small hosting services at like $4.99 a month. The answer is simple; when you pay for those small hosting services you're not using a dedicated server (your own personal server), instead you're sharing bandwith with others on single machines kinda like renting storage space on a computer. In other words you'd be receiving bandwith and storage limits and you wouldn't be able to set the server up completely the way you want it because you're sharing that functionality with others who are renting the same space on the same unit. You could probably start out using small services but once you exceeded a certain amount of members you'd have to purchase your own dedicated servers.

You'll need a web designer and programmer to design the front and back end of your site; thats someone to design the look and visual interface (front end) and someone to actually program the site to do complicated stuff (back end). Get ready to spend close to or over $5,000 on design. If you find a person or firm that designs and programs all in one that might be a flat fee but most times a firm or designer will design the look and feel and contract someone else out to program it so lets say you'll spend around 8,000 - 10,000 to get it built. You can cut that cost signifcantly if you use free tools to design the look and feel like wordpress, joomla or drupal which is free. You can also find prebuilt applications online to support your blog posting, in box, instant messaging needs and cut your cost down to a simple few hundred dollars however once you go big time and get dedicated servers you will need to bring in developers to redesign the site for you which will cost thousands.

If you really want to compete start thinking of ways for your site at its most basic level to generate income.