Written by Steve O'Hear and edited by Richard MacManus. This is the second in a two-part series.

In part one of this series, e-learning 2.0 - how Web technologies are shaping education, I described the way in which teachers and students are embracing web technologies such as blogging and podcasting. Although not designed specifically for use in education, these tools are helping to make e-learning far more personal, social, and flexible. Elgg, in contrast, is social networking software designed especially for education - built from the ground up to support learning.

In this article I review Elgg and interview the founders, Ben Werdmuller and Dave Tosh.

What is Elgg?

Described by its founders as a 'learning landscape', Elgg provides each user with their own weblog, file repository (with podcasting capabilities), an online profile and an RSS reader. Additionally, all of a user's content can be tagged with keywords - so they can connect with other users with similar interests and create their own personal learning network. However, where Elgg differs from a regular weblog or a commercial social network (such as MySpace) is the degree of control each user is given over who can access their content. Each profile item, blog post, or uploaded file can be assigned its own access restrictions - from fully public, to only readable by a particular group or individual. [Ed: this is similar to the "smart" social networks described by Ken Yarmosh in another R/WW post]

From a developer perspective, Elgg is built on LAMP and is open source - released under the GPL. The software has its own plug-in architecture, and supports a number of open standards including RSS (which is used throughout Elgg), LDAP for authentication (soon to support OpenID), FOAF, and XML-RPC for integration with most third-party blogging clients. The OpenID support is being developed as part of a project called Open Academic - which will allow a single login across installations of Elgg, Moodle, Drupal and MediaWiki.

Interview with Elgg founders

I caught up with Elgg's founders, Technical Director Ben Werdmuller and Project Manager Dave Tosh, to find out more about the project and what they have planned for the future - including their company Curverider, which provides Elgg-related services.

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Today I interviewed Geoffrey Arone, the co-founder of social Web browser Flock.com. Flock recently released its official beta, which they call version 0.7. They're currently positioning their product as a mainstream browser which enables people to share and create online. Flock is specifically targeting people who use social networking media tools like MySpace and YouTube.

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The interview [20 mins, 9.7MB] kicks off a new series on my ZDNet blog, called Browsers 2.0. In that series I'll be exploring 2006-era browsers and seeing what is available in the browser market - and what's coming soon with the likes of IE7 and Firefox 2.0.

What interests me most about Flock these days is its goal to become one of the big browsers. Geoffrey said they're planning to go-live (out of beta) in October this year and he is confident that Flock can become a big player in what is a very tough market. He said:

"If we continue to respond to what our users are telling us and get out there and partner with the right folks, absolutely we will be [mainstream]. I want us to become increasingly part of the dialog of: what option do I have to participate online."

Also Geoffrey is sometimes reluctant to call Flock a browser, because "it's a passive term". He said "the way our user testing is showing people interacting with Flock, it's anything but passive."

I mentioned that a lot of Web apps these days are becoming cross-platform and cross-device, so does he think the browser will morph into something different - in other words, where is the browser in general headed? Geoffrey replied:

"I view the browser as a vehicle for creating your online identity. So people are increasingly going towards mobile and to some extent the living room. Right now it's certainly not in our short-term plans. But I do see the browser as being the primary interface to your life online."

Check out the whole audio interview, because we delve into some of those broader browser issues a lot more. Geoffrey said that my questions were the best he’s had in any interview about Flock (which is a nice compliment!).

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Although Judge Edward Fadeley didn't use the term, his warning is clear: 'Drive-by blogging' is out of control.

He described the blogosphere as:

"a veritable Wild West of verbal ambushes and shootouts, with very little fear of legal recourse to keep character assassination, defamation and dirty business tricks in check.

...It's high time to fill the gap in a system that allows defamation in the blogosphere to go unchecked. The harm can be wide-ranging and devastating. Until the law catches up with technology, innocent parties have little or no protection in the volatile world of cyberspace,”

What do you think?

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Next in my series on top Web apps in international markets is Russia. To remind you of the previous countries profiled: Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea and United Kingdom. Other country profiles coming soon include Spain, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand (if I can rustle up enough web apps from the NZ2.0 mailing list!), Latvia, China (I still need more contacts for this) and Ireland (also needs more data). Do contact me if you can give me information about web 2.0 in your country.

My thanks to Alexander Dodonov and Anton Antich for all the information about Russian web apps.

Russia's Web 2.0 Market

Alexander says that Web 2.0 became popular in Russia only recently and there hasn't been much development so far - many projects are in alpha and their business model is not clear (hmmm, doesn't sound that different to the Valley!). Russian users use foreign web 2.0 services a lot, such as gmail.com, netvibes, del.icio.us. And livejournal.com is the most popular blog service for Russians - there are thousands of Russian communites on LJ.

Anton too says that web2.0 is at its infancy in Russia and that a lot of web apps are inspired by their western counterparts. He said there are 2 key things for a project to be successful in Russia: 

1) It has to be fully localized.

2) It has to work with local payment systems, which are very different than in the US or UK - "that's something many of the english language startups don't get and that's why they are not going to be successful here, unless they change". Anton thinks this leaves a lot of proven and empty niches in Russia.

The top Russian Web apps after the jump...

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