During his interview at The Start Conference, WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg announced that BuddyPress will be released before the end of the year. Based on the multi-user version of WordPress, BuddyPress has the features we all expect from a social network: friends, profiles, and tasteless photo galleries.

The same way WordPress lets anyone have a blog, BuddyPress will help anyone create a social network.

As we’ve mentioned before, we’d prefer BuddyPress to reach for some higher goals, like the distributed social network (DiSo) project. Hopefully, this is a step in that direction, making it easier for DiSo to succeed.

Mullenweg first announced the project in March. BuddyPress was created by Andy Peatling, who was hired by Mullenweg’s Automattic after the official BuddyPress announcement. Peatling has apparently been working furiously since.

You don’t actually have to wait to check out BuddyPress. You can download the latest development version. Not that curious? Follow along its roadmap and calendar.

Note: The original headline for this post stated that BuddyPress would be released by December. Mullenweg wrote in to tell us that BuddyPress’s components will be rolled out when they’re ready, with the full platform available around the end of the year (see his comment below).

See also:

• WordPress Mulls Social Network Expansion
• Google’s ‘Friend Connect’ Offers a Way to Bring the Social Web Together
• Tutorial: Keep Track of Your Friends With XFN