A month ago BuddyPress was acquired by Automattic and today the new BuddyPress website was launched:

Right now BuddyPress is still in development,  but you can download the latest BuddyPress builds through SVN if you’re game.

Is this a game changer for social networks?

If BuddyPress becomes a popular add on for WordPress Multiuser, then I think, as I’ve said before, Ning and Facebook should watch out.  Come to think of it with the Prologue theme I could see local competition for a number of tools.

Now I want to think of something to try BuddyPress on…

News from: Photo Matt » New BuddyPress Site

Screenshot/image from BuddyPress.

WordPress is the bloggers platform of choice and with its array of plugins it can do nearly anything.  The WordPress Multiuser plugin BuddyPress let you turn a standard WPMU install into a powerful roll-your-own social network, now this plugin has been pulled into Automattic.

What I didn’t realize (doh!) was that BuddyPress was developed by Andy Peatling of Blaze New Media–in Vancouver!

This has been getting a lot of press today, and for good reason too because it tips Matt’s hand as to Automattic/WordPress’ plans for making a powerful, new social networking tool:

• Vancouver’s BuddyPress goes Automattic | Techvibes Blog
• Wordpress: Going after Ning.com? - - mathewingram.com/work
• Photo Matt » Backing BuddyPress
• BuddyPress (just shows a coming soon with an Automattic logo now)
• Another Andy at Automattic
• Automattic Assimilates BuddyPress, Moves Towards Social Networking

Ning on the ropes?
As Mathew Ingram notes that it could be a powerful competitor to Ning, especially if you can just install it all on your servers.  Rob muses on Techvibes if it will be rolled into WP 2.5.  That I doubt, I mean it could be possible, but I think the power and flexibility really comes with using it on WPMU.

Me?  I’d install it on my servers.  If it seems robust enough I’d sure recommend it to others groups like schools and small businesses.

Facebook should be worried
I’m still thinking that Facebook has peaked.  Social networking is as hot as ever, but Facebook, well I’ve grown weary of it.  Silly apps and no real use for me.  Sure I go there once and a while, but emailing me through there … I might respond, eventually.

With this kind of application, then a savvy company could build something cool for pretty much any group.

Yes the power of Facebook is how many folks are there, so yeah it won’t die easily, but using it for a business or something…I’d pass.  Tie it all in with OpenID and you have one ID for lots of different networks.

Sounds like a great idea.  Sounds like Facebook should be worried.

Checking out the list of the Webware 100 Finalist list I noticed several familiar names…

ConceptShare
Productivity

CoverItLive
Publishing & Photography

Dabble DB
Productivity

Flickr
Publishing & Photography

Flock
Browsing

Mobivox
Communication

StumbleUpon
Social

WordPress
Publishing & Photography

Source: All the Webware 100 finalists in one place | Webware : Cool Web apps for everyone

Okay I know that Flickr, Flock, StumbleUpon, and WordPress aren’t Canadian per se, but Flickr and SU were born here and both Flock and WordPress have folks up here.

Still this list is very impressive.  CoverItLive is one of my new fav online apps.  If I have a solid net connection at a conference, be sure I’ll be using it to cover the sessions.

There are also several companies on the list who aren’t Canadian, but are ones I really like:

BlogTalkRadio
Audio

Carbonite
Utility & Security

Delicious
Social

Feedburner
Publishing & Photography

FeedHub
Browsing

Firefox
Browsing

Gmail
Communication

OpenDNS
Utility & Security

Picnik
Publishing & Photography

Scrabulous
Social

Skype
Communication

Techmeme
Browsing

Technorati
Search & Reference

ThinkFree Online
Productivity

Twitter
Publishing & Photography

Congratulations to all the finalists … this is a great time to try a new app or three.  Sure some of the folks (IE, Yahoo, and all the Live services) are nothing terribly new or innovative, but they do influence the Internet and how we use it.

Update: Thanks to Greg at TechVibes for pointing out that I missed Toronto-based Octopz in my list of Canadian companies.  Cool, another company to check out!

Marshall Kirkpatrick and I were chatting tonight and he mentioned the new WP theme called “Prologue” that has some very Twitter-like features.  We were also both musing how we were sitting chatting at DEMO while other folks were blogging it.  Of course if you can’t be first–be smarter (I think Marshall might beat me in that department tonight).

From the WP.com blog, Matt let us know about this new theme and what it could be used for:

Some folks have suggested that using WordPress, Prologue, and RSS you could create a pretty effective distributed version of Twitter. This isn’t something we’re personally interested in, but we’ve made the theme available as open source under the GPL so if you want to hack around it yourself you’re welcome to. For WordPress.com users the theme is available in your “Presentation” section. From the WordPress.com blog

Matt is being too modest.  Maybe too cagey.  But really I think this brings something us that Twitter lacks–affinity groups.  Yes, I know Pownce has them, but man are they hard to manage.  Imagine this, you have a descent-sized company.  You don’t really want to use Twitter for everything, but man it’s useful for a lot of things isn’t it?  What if you had a WPMU-based blog for the company … okay maybe just WP.  But you have blogs with different groups … HR, IT, General, For Sale, etc.  You just leave your comment on each of these blogs … heck you wouldn’t have to even contribute to any or all of these blogs, just follow the RSS feeds.  Pretty darn powerful.

Allen Stern, I think, is on the right track with his post:

With Wordpress the dominant player in blogging, this could be a game changer. What makes it interesting? Check out the final comment by Matt in the announcement, “Some folks have suggested that using WordPress, Prologue, and RSS you could create a pretty effective distributed version of Twitter. This isn’t something we’re personally interested in, but we’ve made the theme available as open source under the GPL so if you want to hack around it yourself you’re welcome to. For WordPress.com users the theme is available in your “Presentation” section.” “Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey goodbye” Says WordPress To Twitter | CenterNetworks

Now…I think I need to test this somewhere.

Other folks talking about this: Mathew Ingram, Mashable

Great, great news this morning that Automattic received an investment, and the Gray Lady herself is one of the investors, of $29.5 million to build their business even more.  I like to see these reasonable amounts of funding.  Sure it’s a lot of money, but it also costs a lot to build a business as complex as what they are doing.  Just some of the coverage and kudos I read this morning about the investment:

• WordPress.com Creator Raises $29.5M - GigaOM
• » Open source business model reaching tipping point | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
• Automattic Raises $29.5M Series B Round, New York Times Joins In - ReadWriteWeb
• Matt Mullenweg, Founder of WordPress.com, Raises $29.5 Million– bub.blicio.us
• A Fool’s Wisdom » We Raised $29.5 Million!
• Photo Matt » Act Two
• Wordpress lands a whopper - - mathewingram.com/work
• Automattic secures $29.5 million B round « Mark on WordPress
• Automattic for the Money ($29.5M to be Exact) | Mark Evans
• Automattic fundraising « Toni’s Garage

I echo Dan Farber’s sentiment that this gives the whole open-source business model serious credibility.  The fact that WP has taken off so fast (really if you think about it) and has been adopted by many large organizations (like b5media–all our blogs are on WP), is a testament to WP’s power, flexibility and stability.

Again, kudos to Matt, Toni, and the whole Automattic team.

I got the tip on Friday that my favourite anti-spam plugin for WP was getting a major update… they announced it yesterday/today (Heri got the jump on me)

Big day for Defensio! Why? Because we’re rolling out a boatload of new functionality: Source: Defensio, the blog » Blog Archive » Defensio Does OpenID

The big news is that Defensio now supports OpenID, which I didn’t at first realize was a big deal until I read more about it in the Defensio post and Heri’s post as well:

Mat Balez also explains this will increase the accuracy of the algorithm — I guess he means Defensio will aggregate comments left by a same OpenID user on various blogs, thus allowing their system to compute the level of spaminess of the user much easily. Source: Defensio now supports OpenID | Montreal Tech Watch

OpenID in a spam plugin?  Gimmick right?  Why?  Just ’cause the other cool kids are doing it?  Clearly my first impression was dead wrong.  With OpenID tied to the anti-spam plugin then comments you make across the Net can be whitelisted faster (approved, maybe depending on the bloggers feelings).  There is huge potential there.  Just huge.

Oh and yeah Defensio is just plain better too.  They, like Akismet, added the separation of comments from trackbacks (trackback spam is getting pretty bad of late isn’t it?).  Still the better, imho, presentation of spam by just hiding the really spammy stuff.  Love it.  And, like Heri said in his post, it’s doing a pretty darn good job (this is from my personal blog):

Here’s my advice to Automattic: Buy Defensio.  Really.  Nothing against Matt and Akismet, it is a great plugin and system, Defensio is just doing a better job and has some great ideas for spam management.

So if you have Defensio installed, upgrade it, if you don’t, try it.  I’ve been using it since its pre-release days and haven’t had a second thought about it.  Yeah I’m biased–I really like stuff that works!

The Crunchies were given out on Friday and the complete winners list was put up on Saturday.  Congrats, of course, go out to all of the winners, but there are a few winners who I want to give special attention to:

Best bootstrapped startup: Techmeme.
Founded and developed solely by Gabe Rivera, Techmeme serves as the front page of the tech blogosphere. The site’s advanced algorithms identify the day’s top stories by making sense of conversations across the web’s best blogs.

Best Startup CEO: Toni Schneider (Automattic)

Schnieder has lead the company from its roots as a open source alternative to Movable Type into a multi-million dollar enterprise that saves the world from blog spam and offers a free hosted blogging solution that competes with Google’s Blogger.

Most likely to succeed: Automattic (WordPress)

The open source blogging platform that powers the long tale and turned into a multi-million dollar spam fighting and hosted blogging service.

Best use of viral marketing: StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon’s service lets users bookmark and discover new sites they love. With only a $1.5 million investment in 2005, StumbleUpon gew to over 4 million Stumblers and was bought by eBay in 2007 for $75 million Source: 2007 Crunchies: The Winners

Gabe Rivera has done something great with Techmeme.  It might not be perfect, even Gabe sees that, but it is my source for finding the best conversations on the hot topics.  I generally know what the hot topic du jour is, but it’s who is chiming in and saying what that I use Techmeme for.

Automattic, well I’m a huge fan.  Congrats to all my friends as Automattic, Lloyd, Matt, Donncha, and especially Toni for pulling in the Best Startup CEO award!

StumbleUpon, before it was scooped up by eBay, was based in Calgary, so I have to give props to them.

With this kind of recognition, I wonder what is coming up for both Techmeme and Automattic.  Sure I could guess, but what fun would that be?  I’ll just have to see if I can dig up some tips.  Maybe DEMO in a couple weeks will give me some ideas.

Photo of Mike Arrington, Toni, and Matt by Scott Beale