Social networks not only provide extensive communication capabilities, but also include software application development that can be used together. Together they form an infrastructure that may be particularly effective in developing a common issue that requires intense interaction of many participants, for example, in problems of monitoring the state of the environment. Modern aspects of the operation and use of social networks is the subject of study of a wide range of researchers. However, the main focus of their content is on the analysis of content of social networks and their capabilities in terms of promoting new ideas, goods and services, and psychological impact on people, etc. Technological aspects of the use of social networks are given less attention. However, it is the latest technology is the "backbone" of social networks and the effectiveness of their use will continue to grow. This article analyzes the social networking capabilities for building distributed applications, particularly for information support of environmental-economic monitoring. The aim of this work is to study the power of social networks to build application uses the example of informational support environmental and economic monitoring. Presentation of the material is illustrated by constructing an application "National monitoring" for network "VKontakte", which displays the generalized indicators of the ecological status of the territorial areas on the map of Ukraine.