Elgg Spaces zooms ahead

Elgg, the social software tool created by Dave Tosh and Ben Werdmuller, seems to be going from strength to strength. Dave and Ben recently set up Curverider Ltd. to provide paid-for professional-level support to those who are running their own Elgg system. You can check out Josie Fraser's recent interview with Dave and Ben on EdTechUK.

Ironically, the duo are now singing the praises of offline social networking (or at least Ben is :-), in a way that oddly mirrors a PR campaign slogan by a certain mobile phone company, "Good Things Happen When Your Phone's Off". Clever use of reverse (consumer) psychology? Maybe. Well, good on 'em for getting in some business acumen and expanding their reach.

Just launched is Elgg Spaces, which offers a subscription service for those who want to set up their own Elgg, but who don't want the bother or the technical hassle of installing and maintaining it themselves.

A Cambridge graduate research seminar in modern literature and languages has just chosen Elgg Spaces as its preferred web solution.  Elgg Spaces is an interesting choice, pointing perhaps to the huge popularity of Facebook in Cambridge -- questioned in the media as offering a different, newly-mediated variety of an already-existing social exclusivity, just an online extension of the old school tie. I would see it more as evidence that students wish to carry out their activities in what you might call "semi-private" environments. Not the "walled gardens" appropriate for young children -- these are young adults. They want a degree of independence from the University, but they also want to belong to a defined community.

The French Graduate Research Seminar is entirely student-owned and student-run; it provides a kind of "pre-professional" identity space where graduates can try out a "professional" online persona in a safe environment. In a non-earth-shattering way, I see this choice as offering further proof that grad students are looking for the same kinds of tools and affordances, and more particularly, the same kind of informal, personalised environments, that they already access in their non-study-related online environments.