Community Platforms: What makes a good one?

Posted on 18. Nov, 2009 by karthick in Reports, Reviews

How do you categorise and cherry pick the best community platform? What would be the baseline that you would target? This the purpose of the post and what follow sis an analysis of what we have put together.

The breakdown.

First a definition is in order. What is a Community platform?

A community platform refers to the community platform “tool”. This is a tool (open source or otherwise) that enables people to build their own community networks or groups. So if I wanted to start a community for Kawasaki Bikes or Micheal Jackson dance moves club, what is the community platform tool that I should look into?

That’s my purpose in the series of blog posts that will follow. I plan to analyse a bunch of various tools, each bringing it’s unique features to the table, and then see what would broadly fit your (and well mine too) needs.

The Methodology of Analysis.

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Community Platform Review : ELGG

Posted on 20. Oct, 2009 by karthick in Reviews

In our first series of Community platforms, we are going to dwell deep into the world of platforms (and tools) that give people the power of forming communities and groups. The first part is targeted at open source social platforms. If you are thinking about forming a community and would like to know which platform would suit your interests best, then these series of posts are for you.

Our first community platform – ELGG.
ELGG gets its name from a town in Switzerland and also means Moose in many languages. It (Website) is an open source social engine that helps you build and form your community.  ELGG has been in development since 2004. What does a 5 year old product (latest version being  1.6.1) have to offer us? Quite a lot of features.

Unlike a lot of other platforms, ELGG started off with a vision to integrate the best of Web 2.0 and all popular social media tools integrated into one community platform. While version 1.0 included RSS feeds, forming groups, uploading pictures and avatars a lot has been added since then.  The ease with which one can use ELGG has made it a popular platform and the Education sector has particularly taken a liking to it. Recognising its efforts, Infoworld awarded ELGG its Bossie Award for the best open social networking platform.

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