B. Mann Consulting

David Crow in Toronto picks up the community platform meme and lists some other tools / platforms available in response to Chris Pirillo's announcement regarding the building of Gnomepal on Drupal.

I already commented on Chris' initiative here, but here are some comments I made on David Crow's post:

Now, which of those listed platforms have portable data? Which of them are a suitable platform for building the (invariably) custom pieces that each community may want as they grow?

The tough part with many systems -- especially closed, hosted ones -- is that they provide great initial starting points, but then often lack in customization or growth options. And god forbid that your platform provider "go away" -- then you're completely stuck, and need to start over.

This is why I have chosen to go with fully open systems, because they can grow with communities and can never be locked down or disappear.

@Varun:
Facebook is ultimately closed and not a participant in the "open web". And it's someone else's platform with someone else's rules. I would hope that we steer around such closed instances and strive to connect openly.

@Peter Childs:
"What I’d like to see is a platform that recognizes communities are networks of interests (people & organizations) and doesn’t try to become a destination"

I think this is spot on -- don't try and a become a destination IN AND OF ITSELF -- but rather add value through various aggregation and hub features. This also seems to argue for mini-networks that cross sites.

Open platforms are as important as open data or any other cross site initiatives. I don't care what you end up picking as your community platform, as long as your data and your users can seamlessly interwork with the other systems out there. The network is not the destination.

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.