Social Tools for Movable Type and WordPress

Movable Type is empowering its users to create social networks right in their own blogs with the release of Movable Type Pro. Bloggers will now be able to create their own communities on their own site with user registration and profiles, forums, content rating, 'friending,' and even a Twitter-style 'follow' feature. The new features will use the OpenID scheme and seek to lure the power of the social network away from corporate media companies.

In a blog post, Movable Type's Anil Dash said , "Almost seven years ago, when Movable Type was first being created, the power of publishing on the web was still largely in the hands of a few giant media companies. In the years since...that power has been unleashed, making it possible for anyone to publish...Today, we're bringing the same idea to social networking. Providing social features to your community doesn't mean you have to give up control of your community to a giant media entity."

Not to be left behind, WordPress has also been developing social ideas along the same lines with a set of plug-ins called BuddyPress. Still in development, BuddyPress will have features like profiles, groups, private messaging, status updates and so on. With two of the major blogging platforms going social, it's clear where the future of blogging is going, but will it work?

With blog readers typically reading content from a wide range of sites it seems unlikely that they will want to participate in a community on a majority of the blogs they visit. Not to mention the fact that many people use RSS readers so they can read posts without visiting blog sites at all.

Sure, some blogs, like the Movable Type-based sensation Today@PCWorld, may have a reader base large enough to support their own community. But for the most part blogs are already a part of the larger social web spread across 'home bases' like Facebook, MySpace, and Orkut and then spreading out to places like Digg, StumbleUpon, and Twitter. Do we really need more?

I don't know about you, but I am quite content to Digg content or post it to my Facebook profile or simply leave comments on a particular post. The way I see it, blogs have already found their place in social networking, let's leave it that way.