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It is easy to wonder who in the world would make another social network now, for there are already tonnes of them around and to top it none of them are making any significant money. In my opinion, Buddypress gives options that large blogs didn’t have before, that it is to build a community around itself. The network is essentially a mini community of users, contributors in that particular niche. For instance, a few food bloggers can come together and make afood community filled with blog recipes, profiles, photos of their food, etc. using Buddypress. While they used to earlier connect using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. for these, having a community site simplifies things and is more engaging. Of course, this is just an example, and it’s scope if limited only by imagination. And that is the major USP of Buddypress.

Running a community oriented site is a lot more hardwork than running a blog. The success of Buddypress has to be tied in with the success of publishers because that is how Wordpress grew, and that is how the developer community will take notice which makes WP what it is.

For starters, setting up an account on one of these sites is very easy to do, and once a user is done the page they come away with is essentially a WordPress blog all their own. Or so it seems - in fact, if you are running this program on your own server and domain, these mini-blogs and site content will turn your visitors into content generators for you. If, for example, you have 50 people who are very interested in what your company sells, and you gain them as members, they will write on occaision in their blog, and those blog updates are fresh content for Google. If the posts are particularly good, people will link to them, and all that link juice will come back to improve the rankings on your site. In a way, it is a brilliant way to get content developers for your site who will work for free.

“BuddyPress will completely transform a vanilla installation of Wordpress MU into a fully functional social network platform.”

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They are developing an open source community, profiles and blogging platform that I think will change community software the way Wordpress (Buddypress’ parent project) has changed blogging.

The power of a blog is its network of users, and Web users are becoming accustomed to a culture of participation. Just as blogging is changing publishing, social networking is going to change blogging. So it's appropriate the these products are getting new social features.