Ohloh connects people through software development

Aside from social networks and web 2.0, Open Source is also making waves on the web. Even the giant internet players are partaking of the OS phenomenon that some of them have banded together to form the OpenSocial Movement. So, I guess it’s about time that social networking and open source development have a dedicated social network of their own. Fortunately, a new social networking which connects open source developers through the software they create was born under the name of Ohloh.Ohloh is an integration of various web products and services. It is a software directory for one, composed of open source software created by Ohloh members themselves. As a software directory, you can search for projects, add your own projects, search for people and add your own profile.

Software directory or database left alone is useless. For any software to achieve its full potential, it has to be critiqued, evaluated and tested. Ohloh answers that need. It let users build their own stacks of software that they have developed, find other members stack and comment about these stacks. In the end Ohloh members help each other out to achieve a good and viable open source software or application.

For its social networking feature, Ohloh members can create their own profile and advertise their software development skills. These profiles can be seen by other fellow Ohloh members who will give them recognition for their achievements.

A unique feature of Ohloh is its unique source code crawlers which collect detailed development statistics about projects and their contributors.

Ohloh is indeed a pretty cool social network and a useful one at that. It makes the Open Source niche fun without sacrificing its underlying purposes of advancing the open source development.

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