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.
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.