Innovation: Historic Intellectual Property Ruling Could Validate Open Licenses

The Next Social Networks Will Be Powered By WordPress and Movable Type

Platforms like WordPress and Movable Type democratized the process of self-publishing. With these tools, everyone could be a publisher and it didn't require advanced technical expertise to do so. Now, the next revolution for publishing is to bring that same ease of creation to the process of building social networks. With Six Apart's recent release of Movable Type 4.2, that revolution has begun. The new release provides DIY tools for building your own social networking platform which includes member profiles, forums, friending capabilities, rating of content, and more. WordPress isn't too far behind, either - a new platform calledBuddyPress, is being built on the WordPress core. Is this the future of blogging? Or is this the future of web publishing altogether?

Movable Type 4.2

With the latest release of Movable Type 4.2, publishers can easily add forums, community blogs, and group blogs to their site. Site members can establish customizable profiles with avatars and can follow their friends. Given the correct permissions, community members can submit content for publishing on the site for the admin to approve. Those submissions will then display next to the comments on the submitter's user profile. Site members can also vote on content they like, too, a feature MT is calling "Digg in a box."