Why BuddyPress? “Build passionate users around a specific niche.”

Do you have to become a social network? “No, look at GigaOM Pro,” a recently launched subscription research site based on BuddyPress.

But, yo do get “BYOTOS: bring your own terms of service.” That is, you get to control content and interactions. And your service won’t be subject to the whims of a larger network like FaceBook (or vagaries of their service — think Ma.gnolia)

It’s pretty easy, Andy says, to create a custom BuddyPress component, and there are already a number at the BuddyPressDEV Community.

The BuddyPress forums have a number of threads about handling invitations (two worth looking at: one, two), but no real solution has emerged. At the same time, there’s also a need for some means of confirming other actions such as password resets, email changes (both of those are already handled by WPMU, I know), cell phone numbers to receive SMS messages, and other actions that need to be confirmed later.

So I’m proposing a generic API to handle things like this. The built-in WordPress cron and ajax functions seem to offer a clear pattern for creating such an API: Simply, plugins and core code could register an action and a function to be called when that action is executed. The API could also store data to be sent to that function when it is executed.

Among the things I’d do with this?

• Confirm email addresses
• Confirm cell phone numbers via text message
• Confirm IM accounts
• Confirm Twitter accounts
• Confirm password reset requests
• Confirm invitations in BuddyPress

Anybody else interested?

Hi, I’m Casey. I developed Scriblio, which is really just a faceted search and browse plugin for WordPress that allows you to use it as a library catalog or digital library system (or both).

I’m not the only one to misuse WordPress that way. Viddler is a cool YouTube competitor built atop WordPress that allows you to tag and comment inside the timeline. StayPress is a property management and booking system also built atop WordPress.

BuddyPress is a social network in a box — really, take a look at the theme screenshots. Each user has a profile and friends. Users form groups and engage in discussions or private messaging. And of course, it’s WordPress afterall, users can each have one or more blogs. And then all of that is brought together in this activity updates view.

And again, because BuddyPress is just a bunch of WordPress plugins, you can use it in conjunction with Scriblio to get faceted searching and browsing of all sorts of materials, and, perhaps, use it in your community to build a community driven digital archive.

But this social network isn’t necessarily your social network and not everybody can login to my system. The solutions so far are OpenID, which makes it easy and secure to use multiple systems, and OAuth, which makes it easy and secure for users to give other applications or websites permission to use your data without having to toss their username and password around the web like confetti. And those are foundations of DiSo, the distributed social network, which leverages open formats to reduce social network fatigue (see xfn, hcard, and xoxo).

And that’s cool, because the goal of this isn’t to build a new social network, the goal is to build new applications that are socially aware (and geographically aware too).

Facebook and MySpace are trying to turn themselves into application platforms (how else will they monetize their audience?). Google is pushing OpenSocial to compete with it. But no matter what features they offer their users, they user still orbits the site.

Scot Hacker talks of BuddyPress changing the game, turning “social networks” from destination websites, to features you’ll find on every website. And the “social network” is the internet, with all those sites sharing information meaningfully.

Some might say this is little more than overgrown XFN, but Tris Hussey thinks Ning is on the ropes and Facebook should be worried.

At least the design shows all the right stuff.

Andy Peatling, who developed a WordPress MU-based social network and then released the code as BuddyPress has just joined Automattic, where they seem to have big plans for it. I’d been predicting something like this since Automattic acquired Gravatar:

It’s clear that the future is social. Connections are key. WordPress MU is a platform which has shown itself to be able to operate at Internet-scale and with BuddyPress we can make it friendlier. Someday, perhaps, the world will have a truly Free and Open Source alternative to the walled gardens and open-only-in-API platforms that currently dominate our social landscape.