This may be just the TechCrunch blurb, but if they really want to be the WordPress of social networks, using Rails will be a problem for them.
Part of the success of WP is that it uses PHP and MySQL, two technologies that are ubiquitous, and that installing it is a simple matter of dumping some files on some shared hosting space.
Installing a Rails app, on the other hand, is nothing to sneeze at.
Our model will probably end up being more like MySQL than WordPress, but that's a harder analogy to understand. In any case, though, we think Heroku (http://heroku.com/) is a game-changer when it comes to hosted Rails apps.
huh? You never heard of ModRails? Check out ModRails.com
Installing and setting up Rails is getting more and more easy since the days of 2005. The only disadvantage now is the memory consumption of each Mongrel instance that loads your entire Rails app into your memory.
This could be a lucrative space, especially in the enterprise. While the field is a bit crowded, I think Insoshi differentiates themselves by providing the source code, and for secure intranets that is a necessity.
I know of two other open source social networks that also offer their source code: Loved By Less and Buddypress.
Here's the problem I have with Insoshi and Loved By Less: They don't seem (as yet) to offer any kind of architecture to modify and extend the code base. If you want to customize, you are altering source code.
Contrast this to Wordpress, which has an awesome plugin architecture and an extensive system of hooks to allow for customization, all without touching a line of source. Though I haven't seen BuddyPress source, I am hopeful that it follows Wordpress's suits.
It is the ability to customize and extend, coupled with a super powerful and slick admin system, that has made WordPress such a successful venture.
That's my opinion at least, from an admittedly cursory review of the source code on these projects.
Awesome, go get 'em. I think you'll have some stiff competition from BuddyPress, particularly since they've got a head start on the extensible platform, but I wish you guys the best... it's anybody's game at this point. Ning is really the platform to beat, in my opinion at least.
Congrats on TC, Michael, Long - and thanks for helping me to get up & running with Insoshi a while back.
As far as I'm concerned, a business like this (mysql/wordpress for social networks) was bound to happen. I'm just glad it's written in Ruby, running on Rails, version controlled via Git, and founded by the guys who taught me Rails (via RailsSpace).
There's loads of enterprise social networking consultancies popping-up, and they all want their own custom made platform , written in the latest web development framework, to sell straight in to the SMEs. Insoshi should fit the bill quite nicely. The only major question is how hosting services fit in to this (WordPress.com?), but I'm sure the guys already have this planned out.
As for the WordPress plugin comparison; Rails already has a convenient plugin architecture, so there's no reason why Insoshi can't piggyback this, at least for the time being.
"the code he released under an MIT License in July 2007 should be considered the first RoR open source code."
I hope that's a typo. If the writer honestly believes that sentence, he has no business writing for TechCrunch (or anyone, really).
I think he's talking about "the first RoR open source code for a social network." But even that is a sketchy claim. I've contributed to open source RoR projects that were loose social networks as early as 2005.
He meant the latter. RailsSpace was to my knowledge the first open-source source social networking platform in Rails (with the profiles, friending, avatars, blogs, etc. that we associate with a modern social network). Mark certainly didn't mean to imply RailsSpace was the first open-source project in Rails.
Lovd is made by Less Everything (http://lesseverything.com/), which runs a thriving contract development firm and makes a beautifully elegant accounting application (http://lessaccounting.com/). We think Lovd is great---in fact, you'll find some Lovd code inside the current Insoshi code base, with more to come---but it's a side project for them. In contrast, Insoshi is our sole focus, which means we have more resources for community-building, documentation (http://docs.insoshi.com/), and future development.
Lovdbyless is impressive, but it is mysql-specific and depends on some non-standard plugins to work (one of them is proprietary, somebody correct me pls if I've understood it wrong).
Insoshi on the other hand is DB agnostic, works beautifully out of the box with sqlite3 (or mysql) and does not require any esoteric plugins.
Elimination of unneeded dependencies is a major requirement for me so I consider Insoshi a winner.
I am pretty sure that lovd is db agnostic. And it uses no proprietary or "non-standard" plugins. Can someone tell me what a "non-standard" plugin is? For that matter, what is an "esoteric" plugin? This smells like fud me.
"Lovd by Less touts itself as an open-source platform for social networking. And indeed, the software itself is released under an open-source license, and provides some useful functionality. However, restrictions on some of its essential plug-ins raise questions about its actual licensing status."
It's not just a demo site, though; we're using it to coordinate the project itself. Contributions should be incorporated into the live site within a week or two. You can find the source code at GitHub:
Part of the success of WP is that it uses PHP and MySQL, two technologies that are ubiquitous, and that installing it is a simple matter of dumping some files on some shared hosting space.
Installing a Rails app, on the other hand, is nothing to sneeze at.