Social networking sites like Facebook are being used by a huge amount of people (by huge, I mean huge). A problem they seem to be plagued by is that anyone and everyone can use them. They’re full of people with completely different interests, they’re mainly used to play silly games and “poke” people, and overall they’re big time wasters. Their root use has been overshadowed by everything else. What is a social networking site for? Connecting and communicating with people.

What we need are more topical social networking sites. Sites that are intended to be used by people with a given set of interests. I’m not saying large-scale sites like Facebook are a bad idea, but I think niche sites are a good idea as well.

That’s where Elgg.org comes in.

Elgg is an open, flexible social networking engine, designed to run at the heart of any socially-aware application. Building on Elgg is easy, and because the engine handles common web application and social functionality for you, you can concentrate on developing your idea.

Overall it’s got a Facebook-like feel to it, offering users profiles and dashboards, blogging, bookmarking, forums, OpenSocial applications, etc. It even has APIs.

I’ve yet to try out an install of it yet, but it looks like a great open-source script.