Several months ago someone posted a list of 20 things SF could do to be better (or something liek that) and one of the suggestions was creating an SF-centric social network.  I believe they suggested Ning.  A few people pointed out that social networking is great, but Ning is somewhat lacking.

Now, this was all before Tor.com, so perhaps that need has been filled.  (Plus we have 42Blips now.  I wish more people were on it, though…)  But in case people still feel we need some kind of SF SM, perhaps BuddyPress is a step forward.  BuddyPress is a set of plugins and perhaps a theme one can apply to an installation of WordPress MU (the version of WP that allows for multiple blogs, just like WordPress.com).  This way everyone can have their own area complete with WordPress blog and also profile, but connect with others, make friends, all that.

I am not totally convinced that SF needs its own separate social network since we seem to be pretty good at carving out spaces in the existing ones like LiveJournal and FaceBook.  (Yes, I’m on Facebook now.  sigh)  Still, BuddyPress looks like it would be awesome for other folks interested in building this type of thing easily and on software that is intuitive and customizable.