Searching for the Universal Social Content Platform

I'm writing, with the encouragement of my anti-stealth friend Charlie O'Donnell, a series of posts which talk more explicitly about BricaBox. This first one is about the market and web trends which are informing us. Future posts will talk about WHY you'd use BricaBox, from a consumer perspective. For now, please read the first part here.

Here's an excerpt from the BricaBox Manifesto: Part 1, on the BricaBox Blog:

In the last 5 years, the blog has shared the stage with new social applications. Some of these social applications have been social networks, but the most valuable and compelling have been what we call "social content sites." YouTube and Wikipedia have led this social content wave and have demonstrated the value of having groups of people contribute to a base of content. However, little has happened to grant everyday web users the power to create their own social content sites. While wiki and video platforms have emerged, the same simplicity and universality that made the blogging platform so powerful has yet to appear in the social content space. Tools like MediaWiki or PBWiki have lowered barriers to help you make your own Wikipedia; but, the fat and long tail (diverse and highly valuable) of other social content sites, which do not yet have free and easy-to-use platforms, are left with extraordinarily high barriers to participation.

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It is our opinion that one-off, rigid platforms will not unlock the value in this "long tail" of social content sites; therefore, we have set off to create a universal social content platform: a way for anyone to create a social content website using any combination of tools and data sources, just as easily as someone can create a blog.