Matt Mullenweg, owner of Automattic and self prescribed Head of Bug Creation for WordPress, announcedlast night at his blog that the new website for BuddyPress, an extension for WordPress MU that will expand its social network capabilities, is now live and ready for human consumption. Matt announced that Automattic was taking BuddyPress under their wing only a month ago, so no time is being wasted.
BuddyPress is being described as
…a set of WordPress MU specific plugins, each plugin adding a distinct new feature. BuddyPress contains all the features you’d expect from WordPress but aims to let members socially interact.
BuddyPress.com
The list of capabilities that BuddyPress will have when it is released sounds very, very cool. The fact that these things are all driven by (some already existing) WordPress Plugins speaks to the power of the WordPress community, as well. BuddyPress will deliver:
- Extended profiles (with entries being determined by the administrator)
- Private messaging
- Friends lists and groups
- Albums (no doubt thanks to WordPress 2.5)
- Status updates (i would love to see this link up with one’s Twitter feed)
All of this is interesting, especially in light of Chris Pirillo’s announcement last week that he is spearheading an open source social network install profile that sounds a lot like this (but is built on Drupal). I’m sure there will be different aspects, but it sounds awfully similar to the list above. Aside from one group using WordPress as a backbone and another using Drupal, the desires of these two are the same. It’s a shame we can’t see them join forces in some way. Alas, a bit of competition never hurt anybody, right?
Of, and of course (as Matt mentioned) the new BuddyPress site is built on WordPress as well as Sandbox1. Be sure and subscribe to the mailing list and watch the Trac for any words on the development. I sure will be.
- Sandbox is a great starting point for theme designers. Check the classes and overall structure of BuddyPress of any WordPress site to see that it matches that of Sandbox. BuddyPress does. [↩]
