For the thousands of dedicated beta users of Startup Addict 1.0, I give a humbling thank you for using and testing the social platform. The wait for version 2.0 is almost over and with Drupal as the core open source code the future looks very bright for version 2.x and beyond. Drupal was a decision that makes sense right now and a whole lot of sense in the future.
“Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to power scores of different web sites, including”:
* Community web portals
* Discussion sites
* Corporate web sites
* Intranet applications
* Personal web sites or blogs
* Aficionado sites
* E-commerce applications
* Resource directories
* Social Networking sites
Drupal includes features to enable content management systems, blogs, collaborative authoring environments, forums, newsletters, picture galleries, file uploads and download, and much more. Drupal is open source software licensed under the GPL and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers. Drupal is free to download and use.”
The Startup Addict choice mixes well with recent comments from Matt Asay:
In other words, open source lets enterprises focus on delivering customer value, rather than on the “overhead” of software (licenses, contract negotiations, closed APIs, etc.). “Old school” enterprises get this. “New school” web properties do, too. In fact, just about everyone is getting on board…except 20th-century software companies.
Web 2.0 is officially over (not really, we’ve just moved on from the name). Open-source is being supported by multiple enterprises and very large organizations like Google. Rapid development, third-party plug-ins and easy road maps for software expansion will continue to drive choices for startups and make open source an obvious choice over proprietary.
WordPress won the Content Management System (CMS) of 2007, but I think you’ll find Drupal the winner of 2008. Let’s hope Startup Addict 2.0, can get Drupal the exposure it deserves.
About Tod Whipple
Drupal is certainly gaining big momentum.
New modules are added every day, community is expanding exponentially and now with Acquia more money is entering Drupal business.
What Drupal needs now is more good looking Drupal themes and to lower entry threshold for newcomers.