B. Mann Consulting

Chris Pirillo is picking up the torch first raised by Marc Canter over 4 years ago: open community platforms available for everyone, powered by Drupal.

Chris is a long time friend and colleague, and it's great to see him stepping up and saying that he wants to make an out-of-the-box install profile for social communities -- blogging, SEO, multimedia, content licensing. And the thing is, the pieces ARE there. It just needs some effort to put it all together and integrated, and that first run experience integrated into an install profile.

Here's a short quote with some thoughts from Chris on what he wants -- a Community Participation Platform. I think this meshes with Acquia's meme on social publishing:

I don’t want a social network, I want a socially *RELEVANT* network (both on-site and beyond). I don’t want a community platform, I want a participation platform where members are rewarded and ranked appropriately. I don’t want a place where people can just blog, because I’m going well beyond the blog. It’s not just about hosting videos, audio files, or any piece of random media - it’s the discovery mechanisms between them that make them more relevant.

It’s discovery - no matter the community, no matter the type of content. Imagine coming to a site and not just reading about what other people are interested in, but what interests they SHARE with you! Imagine coming to a site and seeing how someone ranks in answers pertaining to your own questions! Oh, I’m confident you may have seen these features elsewhere - but what about for your own site, what about for your own community, what about for your own ideas?

And Chris isn't just shooting his mouth off: he's already been working on this for some time, with Adam Kalsey just recently releasing Activity Stream (a Friend Feed clone), is going to be at the Drupal co-working in Seattle, and is hosting a Drupal hackfest all this weekend (March 29 - 30th). I won't be able to attend the whole thing, but I hope to drop in on Sunday (want to drive down to Seattle with me? leave a comment...).

My interest? Well, easy to use install profiles – whether brands of their own or "merely" great bundles of expertise put together to serve specific needs has been a long time interest and push of mine: it's the way we can make Drupal accessible and optimized for every web vertical and user community.

In a more commercial vein, I hope that Raincity Studios can be one of the first hosting providers to offer Chris' Community Participation Platform at the click of a button.

I'm looking forward to the next exciting piece in this adventure, Chris. You've made an awesome statement of purpose, and like all open source, I'm behind you 100% of the way.