Why I Left Eduspaces

I recently moved my blog from Eduspaces to WordPress. Eduspaces is built on the Elgg platform, which enables you to create your own social network. The Eduspaces network is devoted to educators, which is a great idea… but it’s not quite there.

Here’s a few things I’d like to see Elgg improve upon:

• There’s no way to separate quality content from the rest. As I said in a comment on the Internet Time forums, Eduspaces needs a way to recommend content. When you log in, you’re normally greeted with a mountain of blog posts. A recent article on Wired talks about how Daily Kos gets around this issue. Users are able to vote, promote, and rank content created by the community.
• I couldn’t see what my “friends” were doing. When you log in to Facebook, you can see that Friend A added Friend B to their contacts list. Friend C joined Group A. Friend D wrote a new blog post…. and so on. Elgg does allow you to view your “Friends’ Blog”, which compiles all of your friends’ posts into one list. That’s a good start…
• After trying WordPress, adding the WordPress app to Facebook, and joining a few e-learning Facebook groups, I really don’t have much of a need for Eduspaces. Most Eduspaces folks are on Facebook, and they’re much more active there (most likely for some of the reasons I’ve listed above).

I hope this doesn’t sound too critical of Elgg. I think it’s a great idea. I like that it’s open source.  I just think it needs some work.