Contrary to the hopes of some, Drupal Commons should not be mistaken for a user-focused social network. Instead, Commons is aimed at large companies, and it is a great choice for that audience. I also foresee Drupal Commons being particularly useful for in-house developers with less Drupal experience and for small- and medium-sized companies looking to use Drupal as a springboard for building better relationships with their users.

A very thorough write up of how Acquia Drupal Commons came to be.

It is very much is targeting Jive and Telligent, with similar thought processes behind it, which I think is a shame. I don't find these types of enterprise social networks very interesting, and would like to see more evolution in the space.

Obviously, there is a customer base still clamouring for these type of solutions, and I'm sure with the open source advantages and library of other modules, we'll see some adoption by large companies.

the core problem that faces companies trying to build growing businesses around software — dealing with the fact that different users take advantage of different features, and that applications tend to grow more complex as their user bases grow. It seems to me that the fashionable answer to this problem is to claim to be an auteur of application development, and to only build the features that are appealing to you. But that’s not the way big software companies work, and it’s really not the way they should work. If you’re in the software business, this presentation is a must-read.

I agree - this presentation is a must read (emphasis mine). Go grab the PDF of the presentation from DANC at Lost Garden.

I have been saying for a while that Drupal needs to actually cater to the bottom of the pyramid - so that more people can make it up the pyramid. The infamous "learning cliff" of Drupal means we need to make the "first level" of Drupal that much easier.

This post of moving from Ning to Buddypress would be pretty much impossible in Drupal - and that's a problem.

Yes, I've also read Morten, Todd, and now All Drupal Themes. Here's my take:

The growth of Drupal themes will directly mirror the growth of custom distributions. We are currently in the "it's so easy, we click together lots of Drupal modules from scratch" phase. Once there are more Open Atrium and ProsePoint type of distributions, with known modules / module options and features, then you can build great themes to support those functions.

Form follows function. I've tried to explain this a million times in the D7 process. Having a "great" core theme is impossible when we don't decide what kind of site Drupal should be optimized for out of the box. This same holds true for trying to build and market a theme that will apply and work well with the many vastly different kind of sites that one can build with Drupal.