DAVE TOSH.

Here is an updated profile shot of the new Elgg. If you would like to come in and help us test, please drop me a note with your email and name and I will set it up.

We are currently in the process of getting a few beta testers in to check out the new Elgg, which is both nerve racking and exciting!

So, following on from Ben's excellent post on Elgg views and data, here is an early screenshot of the new Elgg interface, this view is the profile.

It has been awhile since my last blog post. To be honest, the whole team are flat out getting the next generation of Elgg ready for release so I have not had the time to blog.

Still, I do hope that people will think it has been worth the wait when Elgg v1.0 comes out - I am very proud of it and do hope that users will like using it and developing for it as much as I do.

Also, the advisory board is almost ready and it is looking awesome. We are very lucky to have such accomplished people willing to help out with Elgg.

Today I read an interesting article – MySpace is a good website... - which prompted me to write a blog post.

For me, there is no comparison, I use MySpace everyday whereas I might log into Facebook once a week. The reason? It is not that important to me what people in my extended network are doing on a daily basis - the trival sort of stuff like 'John Doe is cleaning up in Scramble'. I am more interested in discovering new things and in the case of MySpace, new music.

Now, if Facebook worked as a filter, created by my network, for things I am interested in, then it might be different. It doesn't. It will tell me that someone drinks more pints on a Friday night than I do or scored 70% in a 1980's children's TV quiz which some people may enjoy knowing, I just find it all a bit empty.

Facebook feels like a place to keep up-to-date with those 'friends' who you don't email, call or meet up with. Personally, I have never discovered anything new through Facebook, but then again, that is not the point. Facebook is a communication tool to use with people you already know, rarely do you connect outside your existing circle.

Enter MySpace - a platform that promotes creation, discovery and connection.

First I click on 'music' on the frontpage, then I select 'directory', then I search. Every single day I find new bands and cool mashups ('galvanize the empire' is fun). I am discovering while others are producing and publishing. I then connect with users who enjoy the same content as me, we then go on to recommend to each other – this is social networking that I find useful.

Broken down, Facebook is about people you already know, MySpace is about user generated content, discovery and connection.

It has been a slow weekend working on a business model for the upcoming Elgg hosted solution and it looks like we might - cue stunned silence - charge users. I know this is old school and very unfashionable, however, the eyeballs business model is not sustainable and, in the long run, can discourage innovation. If users genuinely care what is happening to their data, what information about them is being sold and the longevity of services, plus, you get the product right for the market, then I think there is space for a professional service. Time will tell ;)

If you are interested in Elgg development and news, then you could check out the ElggDev channel on ElggVoices. ElggVoices is a beta site set up to test what will become a new notifications based plugin for Elgg v1.0. All the main Elgg developers are on the channel as it is so handy to quickly engage in light discussion.

I have found another cool Twitter search tool, Summize. This one seems to pick up more than Tweetscan that I mentioned earlier, so I am going to try it out for a while.

Marcus released a draft specification of OpenDD over Atom, which is well worth checking out if you are interested in network syndication / import, export.

One of my pet hates is tech bloggers who, every time they see a new social service, ring off the usual 'Yet another social network' spiel. This is lazy and, in many cases, shows very little understanding of the real climate we are in on the web. Yes, some networks are just a direct rip off of MySpace, however, it is worth remembering that most people on the web do not belong to any social network. If you build something, or incorporate social features into your existing setup, that provide genuine added value for a particular group, cause or niche, then it will work and it will not matter that it is not Facebook or that some 'tech' blogger flames it as YASN.

What we are actually witnessing is a complete change in the way people interact, connect, discover and work, through software on the web and mobile - it is changing the world and is still in its infancy so, I reckon if you've got an idea, you should just let your imagination go wild and give it a shot.

While we sort out the new Elgg site, I will post the latest Elgg announcements here.

Curverider is pleased to announce that we, using the Elgg engine, have secured a contract to build a major social application platform for the financial services industry. This will take Elgg firmly into the enterprise space, and will introduce serious commercial business management features into the platform as optional features. These include digital asset trading and "Software as a Service" billing and contract management. We think these will add powerful features to many different kinds of Elgg-powered applications.

We will be working with a couple of core technology and investment partners to take Elgg into a new era of business-ready social applications. McKinsey & Company and the Financial Times have heralded the definition of Web 3.0 as the partnership between Web 2.0's ease of use and social power with enterprise grade business support and the functionality required to support real commerce. Elgg is going to be at the forefront of this space.

We've been evangelising the social web for half a decade, and it's exciting to see these concepts being adopted into the mainstream. With our expertise, commitment to usability, belief in open standards and devotion to a truly social web, we believe that Elgg is uniquely positioned to change the way people use the web in business. More news to follow.

Facebook have announced they are open sourcing part of their application platform, this is good timing for us working on the new Elgg. Depending on how it looks and more importantly what the TOS are like, we will look to get support implemented quickly into v1.0 to join full support for OpenID, OpenSocial and OpenDD, among others.

UnLtdWorld, a social network powered by Elgg, were runners-up at the recent European start-up 2.0 awards in Barcelona. Well done to all involved. They also have a nomination for this year's Newstatesman awards and I think they are worth voting for - the Elgg platform was second last year so it would be nice for an Elgg powered site to go one better!

Rucku.com, a social network for Rugby fans which is powered by Elgg, is, according to Will Carling, now the biggest on the web - so well done to the team working hard to promote it. If you like sports, particularly football, watch this space.

In other news, we are currently putting together an advisory board for our new range of products launching over the summer – some exciting names already confirmed, more on this soon!

I am finding the whole FriendFeed / Twitter slaying debate boring – who really cares. Twitter is growing in leaps and bounds and the fact people I know outwith the tech bubble are now hearing about the service shows it could soon hit critical mass and I for one hope it does, I like the attitude of those behind the service.

Here is a cool tool to search for latest tweets on Twitter TweetScan. I now use this everyday to find what is going on.

Some of the core Elgg team were recently in San Francisco meeting with Ning, Yahoo, Google, Six Apart, Dolby, Twitter, Crowdvine and Vodafone – it was an excellent trip, with all of us learning so much which I hope will help us move things forward with Elgg.

The first ever ElggMeet was held in San Francisco and was a success with lots of discussion and plenty of beer consumed. A couple of photos are available on the Elgg Flickr account.

We are in the hunt for bigger office premises in central London, with the team looking to expand by around 4 or 5 bodies, we need to address our current situation. So far, I have been looking around the Shoreditch/Old Street area – all suggestions welcome.

As always, if you are a talented php developer or sys admin looking for work, we are hiring!

It was great to see the new format (OpenDD) for syndication and import/export, devised by Curverider, get some attention during the San Francisco trip. In response to Ben's post on ZDNET, some in the Semantic Web community got a little fired up.

In a few weeks we will be releasing our new social application engine, Elgg v1.0. The aim is to make it extremely easy for developers to build socially-aware applications that use a variety of different open standards and social networking features. I think we have taken great strides towards achieving this.

Elgg supports:

• User, object, file and site management
• Social graph functionality (relationships between users and other users, objects and sites)
• Multiple sites (or applications) per installation
• Easy internationalisation support
• System-wide, tag-based searching across all content and users
• Fine-grained access controls
• Multiple views, allowing for mobile applications and embeddable widgets as well as the traditional web browser view
• Event and plugin APIs

As well as these more technical, back-end features:

• RSS, FOAF, XFN for content syndication
• OpenID, OpenSocial, OAuth for integration with other web services
• Open Data Definition and an increasing number of data portability formats for import / export
• An extensible RESTful API, with results in JSON, serialised PHP or XML
• AJAX through jQuery and user-definable callbacks
• Easy extension for use with caching systems such as memcached, for increased system performance
• Use of multiple database connections for scalability

It also comes with these end-user features:

• Profile
• User settings
• Site administration settings

This blog post - by a talented developer who contributed to Drupal among other projects - was sad to read. However, those who have/are running open source projects will understand exactly where he is coming from.

Shortly after releasing the new Elgg core we will be inviting in beta testers for a new service aimed squarely at the SME/Professional market. More on this soon.

Due to some unexpected news, we have had to postpone this year's ElggJam. However, it will be rescheduled for later in the year with a greater focus for developers.

Shortly, we are launching Curverider sponsored (read free beer) StartupMeets in London to harness some of the energy we picked up when out in San Francisco. If you are part of a start up, or a developer wanting to join a start up then you might be interested in coming along.

One of the principles behind the OpenDD (Open Data Definition) project, Ben Werdmuller, wrote a guest post for The Social Web on ZDNET.

"The Open Data Definition is a new format for the import and export of data from within social applications. Rather than an academic exercise, it’s driven by necessity; hopefully, software companies and individual developers who feel the same pressures will join the conversation and build it with us. Data portability is an important issue, and it needs to be solved with practical solutions that work in the real world."

If you want to get up to speed on what OpenDD is, check it out.

The new Open Data Definition (ODD) website is now live. There is not a lot of information there yet but this will change over the coming weeks.

What is the Open Data Definition:

"Open Data Definition allows you to copy your data from one social network to another, keep track of your friends network and synchronise your data across services. Simple to use and trivial to implement, this is your fastest route to true data portability."

Over at Curverider, we are all very excited about this new format, so much so, it has been built right into the core of the next generation Elgg platform, v1.0, which is due for general release in a couple of months.

However, for ODD to really become useful as a true open standard for data portability, it will need more that just Elgg supporting it and working on it, so we are setting out on a trip to the Valley to talk to other providers about the format - this is going to be very interesting.

If you want to be kept up-to-date with developments you can join the mailing list.

Here are the details for our upcoming Elgg Meet in San Francisco.

Wednesday, May 7, 3pm - 8pm - Thirsty Bear Brewing Co., 661 Howard Street (at 3rd)
The event on Upcoming.org

There is the possibility of an Elgg Meet in Boston on June 10th - more shortly.

One of the core Elgg developers, Marcus Povey, will say a little about the forthcoming Open Data Definition at the Oxford Geek Night on April 22nd: Jericho Tavern, 56 Walton St, Oxford
The event on Upcoming