Forum platform with a Facebook like experience?

[Shin Ryoku]

I run a few active photography forums on the XenForo platform and have a dedicated server for those.

At the same time, I've become more and more interested in wrist watches and have started to do a weekly livestream on YouTube to chat about watches. We've built up a decent following there, and people are asking me where they can interact with us more.

I'm part of a Facebook group for watch enthusiasts, and I really like how Facebook groups work. So easy to keep up with new and popular threads. But if I make a FB group, I give up all control, plus the users have to be on FB.

Is there a platform with functionality like FB groups that I could use, control, potentially monetize, etc? I have plenty of server capability for just about anything. I could always use XenForo, but it doesn't seem as well suited to this purpose as FB is.

 

[NYCGuy76]

You might want to check out Social Engine. That might be right up your alley.

 

[Pete]

A lot of people point to IPS Clubs as a way to implement that kind of functionality, but to me this seems to be less like a forum experience and potentially dragging people away from the experience you already have.