WordPress Takes the Next Step

With the occasion of the conference dedicated to the popular open-source blogging platform WordPress, Andrew Mager an illustrated play-by-play of Saturday's WordCamp. His report shows that the hosted version of WordPress has 2.3 million new blogs in 12 months and 35 million posts, and over 6.5 billion page views.

For those used to work with the WordPress, BuddyPress comes as a great point of attraction, a set of plug-ins that enables features similar to those of Facebook, such as friends, groups, private messaging, status updates, and extended profiles, to the blogging platform.

Mager further pointed out that compared to the popular social networks, BuddyPress is a open environment: "Why do we need another social network? BuddyPress is not another "data silo" like Facebook and MySpace. It's mission is to be more open source, handle better control of data, give people better choices, and build greater support for open standards."

BuddyPress is scheduled for 1.0 status in December 2008.

WordPress competitor Six Apart has recently incorporated a social element to its Movable Type platform as well.