All About Elgg. The New Social Networking Platform

By Author: Jason john
Total Articles: 85
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You may have been hearing about the social networking platform called Elgg. It is growing in popularity and everyone is just mystified at how handy it is and how smart it operates. Now, if you don't want to be left behind and wish to know more about it, read on and find out for yourself whether it is deserving of such attention.

What is Elgg?

Elgg is actually an open source social networking platform which you can get for FREE. It was created by Dave Tosh and Ben Werdmuller and was first released in 2004. Last year, it underwent a full code re-write and is now freshly available in 1.6.2 version.

Elgg social networking platform is actually more than just social networking. It supports a wide range of other social media tools such as blogging, micro-blogging, RSS feeds, wikis, bookmarking and more in one single platform. For these reasons, it is definitely not hard to understand why it's growing in popularity. It simply has everything that everyone needs. You surely would not want to settle for less, right?

Elgg for collaborative working and social learning:
Elgg gives premium to collaborative ...
... working and social learning. In fact, the founders actually call the platform a learning landscape. It is specifically created for education.

How is Elgg different from virtual learning environment (VLE)?:
VLE mainly focuses on the course and the delivery of its content while Elgg focuses on the person (learner) and his or her interactions. Elgg is more like an informal space that allows learners to exercise their thoughts and let them freely flow. It's about allowing you to reflect and make your very own connections without the complex approach and structure of VLE. Elgg allows you to discuss and feel real life.

Why choose Elgg?

Currently, there are now different social media tools available for the public. However, not all the users can keep up with the daunting task of working with a huge number of tools. Although some people may find the challenge ok, a lot just can't make things work and they get overwhelmed by the tools. That's why aside from the points already mentioned, here are other reasons why Elgg social networking platform is good:

It allows you to make, manage, and organize your own personal contacts and other resources. In addition, it also allows you to work with other users so you can basically co-create and share contents and various resources in groups.

With Elgg being used within an organization, you will not have to work on gathering together a gamut of stand-alone social media tools. Imagine how much time, effort, and emotions you would have to spend if otherwise. Elgg saves you a lot of energy and makes everything you need within a click away.

It also lets you get rid of the worries over security and privacy issues. Everything in the organization is safe because you can choose your own privacy setting.

It allows you to enjoy a seamless environment where you can utilize a wide range of tools for social media that you can freely share with your friends whenever you wish to.

It is not a centralized service unlike commercial networks which are one space branded. It allows you to customize your system according to your specific needs and requirements, while retaining site-to-site connectivity.

How to access Elgg?

Since Elgg is an open source, it is free for anyone who wants to install it in his server. However, you must have the basic technical knowledge on how to keep your own web server. If you are after a personal space, just log onto Elgg.net. It's a good place to start to get to know more about what Elgg social networking platform can do and how it can be helpful to you.