Buddy Press Turns WordPress Into Social Network

I have been working on a way to integrate social networking into the Social Times website. I have looked at a lot of options one of which was enabling users to create wordpress accounts and leverage the blogging platform to enable users to interact with each other. Soon after my exploration began a few days ago I came upon a new site: BuddyPress. According to the Buddy Press website, “BuddyPress will completely transform a vanilla installation of WordPress MU into a fully functional social network platform.”

This is awesome and I will definitely try this out. The screenshots are impressive. There are currently profile, messaging and image features. I have attached images of the new features to this post. One of the goals of Social Times is to enable anybody to write posts that will be displayed under local categories. For example the D.C. community can post unlimited articles to the D.C. Social Times blog. If any of the local articles are news worthy or are interesting in general, they will end up on the main Social Times blog.

I cannot wait for the new Buddy Press plugins are released. This new feature supports the concept of multiple niche social networks across the web. While sites like Ning attempt to cater to this, the reality is that websites will continue to exist as standalone entities. As such, the new Buddy Press plugins will enable users to communicate within any blog that they find interesting. This will truly be a revolution for wordpress sites and I’m excited for the day it is released. Check out more about the new plugins at the Buddy Press website.

BuddyPress Profile

BuddyPress Message

BuddyPress Photos

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.