Elgg Launches Version 1.0 of Open Source Social Networking Platform

Open source social networking platform Elgg has announced the release of their 1.0 version today. This version has been a few years in the making. The Elgg team has put together a list of features in the new 1.0 version that’s worth a look. Elgg appears a lot like Drupal and Joomla but with a social networking focus instead of a content focus.

Elgg supports social graph functionality, tagging, access controls, views including a mobile option and a variety of widgets. On the technical side, Elgg supports all of the "open’ services including OpenID, OpenSocial, OAuth and the Open Data Definition. There’s AJAX and jQuery for queries and a strong caching system for those times when you get a Yahoo Buzz. Scalability comes in the form of multiple database usage.

With all of the talk of add-on social networking offerings, Elgg developer Ben Werdmuller notes, "Elgg has been designed, from the first line of code to the last, to be a flexible social network. It’s not an organic evolution or a grass-roots development; it’s architecture, and we’re extremely proud of it."

Nick O’Neill has a good post today about Wordpress and Moveable Type getting into the social game.