White label social networking platform CrowdVine, which we have covered a couple of times in this past year, has released a new offering called “CrowdVine for Conferences” that further cements its focus of hosting networks meant for conference attendees.

The free version of CrowdVine for Conferences provides much of the same, simple functionality of a non-conference network (now dubbed “CrowdVine for Groups”). But if you are organizing a conference with 300 attendees or less, you’ll have access to a handful of useful features. Network members can indicate not only their friends but the people they “want to meet” at the conference. Conference organizers can integrate Twitter streams and 3rd-party wikis. And everyone can export the contact information of attendees as vCards after the conference ends (a feature I so wish Facebook and other social networks would adopt).

If you’re willing to pay, you can raise the attendee limit to 1000 ,or unlimited, and gain access to even more features. Advertisements can be removed, you will be given a “dedicated community manager” who helps to foster your network, attendee data can be analyzed to determine who contributed most to the event, speaker information can be imported, sponsorships can be incorporated, and a sessions calendar can be set up. CrowdVine has also partnered with Pathable to create custom, physical badges that show tags and likenesses for each attendee.

For an example of what CrowdVine can do for conferences, check out the Future of Web Apps network and, in particular, its sessions calendar.

Read this coverage to learn about how Confabb is organizing conference information as well.

The news may overflow with stories about the social networking giants, such as Facebook and MySpace, but a horde of companies are doing their best to reduce the fundamental features of these websites to mere commodities. These up-and-coming companies provide so-called “white label” social networking platforms that enable their customers to build their own social networks (often from scratch) and to tailor those networks to a range of purposes.

The idea of white labeling a network is to make the platform provider as invisible as possible to the social network’s users and to brand the network with the builder’s identity or intent. While definitions of “social networking” may vary, social networks are primarily defined by member profiles and some sort of user generated content.

There are roughly three types of companies that have emerged in the space of white label social networking. The first provides hosted, do-it-yourself solutions with which customers can largely point and click their way to a brand new social network. Companies of this type interact minimally with their customers and rather focus on providing the network-building tools that they demand.

We have taken a sample of nine of these companies – Ning, KickApps, CrowdVine, GoingOn, CollectiveX, Me.com, PeopleAggregator, Haystack, and ONEsite – all of which provide free baseline services, and reviewed them individually below. We have also included the chart on the right summarizing all of these companies’ offerings. Credit for initial research into these companies goes to Jeremiah Owyang who compiled a comprehensive list of white label social networking services.

The second type of company provides social networking software for download and installation onto one’s server. The third type works very closely with clients to build a social network based on their needs. These companies might suite your needs much better than any do-it-yourself social networking service, so you may want to check out companies such as Social Platform (a personalized service) or phpFox (a downloadable solution). We’ll take a deeper look at these services in Part 2 of this post.

Out of the services that we review below, we found that Ning provides the best platform for setting up good-looking, sophisticated social networks with minimal effort. KickApps provides the best platform for integrating social networking components into existing websites. CrowdVine and Haystack are viable options for organizations that are looking for simple social networks to improve personalized communication online. CollectiveX is most suitable for existing groups that want to collaborate online. And GoingOn provides a promising hybrid solution with capabilities shared by both Ning and KickApps.

More details on each are below.

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Crowdvine is a hosted free white label social network application created by Tony Stubblebine.

Setting your own network is dead simple. You just need to pick a name, pick some profile questions, and then send out invites with a personalized message. You network is hosted at name.crowdvine.com Profiles consist of a photo, location, personal link, description, blog posts, and the questions the creator of the network chooses. Members can also incorporate RSS feeds from another blog, photo stream, or social bookmarking site. See the Foo Camp social network for an example.

The networks are either open to everyone, open but moderated, or private to the creator’s friends. The design of the site is customizable by main colors and adding code to the header.

Social interaction is basic right now. Members can invite friends, make friends, message each other, and comment on each others pages. By contrast, Ning is more mature, enabling plugins to the network and a more polished finish.