Developing a Social Network: tips, details and information

Question

I would like to create a small Social Network using Ruby on Rails 3. Since it is a complex system, what is recommended for the Information Architecture?

I thought to create multiple RoR applications with a Hierarchical Architecture, each used to accomplish a specific purpose. Therefore I created one domain and more subdomains.

For example:

Main domain: http://main.com

All nedded subdomains: http://app1.main.com, http://app2.main.com, ...

A problem that occurs using this type of architecture is the authentication of users, because, while setting the cookie at the http://main.com level (so that all cookies are accesible from all subdomains), they are not "followed" when I try to make an HTTP GET calls between subdomains, unless you explicitly pass parameter values of cookies in the HTTP GET call, maybe using a SSL/TSL connection. Is this a right approach?

However, in this case, I can think of using REST APIs and a protocol such OAuth to protect resources...

What is the right way to create a Social Network? Can anyone advise me detailed enough?

P.S.: is it correct what I'm saying?!

Answer 1

Take a look at Social Stream, a core for building social network websites :

https://github.com/ging/social_stream

Answer 2

you could also look at Diaspora it's a fully featured social network and they made the source code available on github! https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora