WordPress Mulls Social Network Expansion
The idea of make WordPress into the hub of your online activity is not new — Chris Messina and the rest of the DiSo project have been working toward exactly that for some time. But now it seems that Matt Mullenweg, creator of WordPress, has something similar in mind.
Mullenweg’s company Automattic recently snatched up Andy Peatling, creator of BuddyPress a collection of WordPress plugins that turn the software into a kind of niche social network. In announcing the hiring, Mullenweg writes:
It’s clear that the future is social. Connections are key. WordPress MU is a platform which has shown itself to be able to operate at Internet-scale and with BuddyPress we can make it friendlier. Someday, perhaps, the world will have a truly Free and Open Source alternative to the walled gardens and open-only-in-API platforms that currently dominate our social landscape.
What remains unclear is exactly what sort of social connections Mullenweg has in mind.
On one hand this could be an effort to bake a social network into WordPress. Or, on the other hand, it could be something more like DiSo, which is about managing your online existence through the WordPress interface.
Given the nature of the BuddyPress plugin, it would seem that the former is more likely, which is unfortunate since the later would likely be more useful.
Luckily the DiSo folks are still hard at work in the bat cave, and we expect great things to emerge eventually.
[via GigaOm]
