Gigaom has a good introduction to a proposal from Chris Messina to turn Wordpress into an open social network he calls DiSo. He calls the project that he is working on with Steve Ivy and Will Norris a network built "inside-out."

Not a bad analogy to living on the Web. This comes at the same time that Moveable Type (used by some of our Beat Bloggers) makes an announcement to go open source. This means more functionality and tools, but it also means the road is wide open about how Moveable Type and Wordpress can develop.

It's all a bit tech-oriented right now. Just like Google's Open-Social, if you aren't a programmer then this won't effect you for about a year. But it's another mark on the wall of turning the infrastructure of the web into a social network itself. Which means learning the tricks of the trade now, while third-party sites like Facebook and MySpace or Multiply (Read/Write Web's review of Multiply) run the show, will be a boon to journalists who are on their own in the future.

BuddyPress will completely transform a vanilla installation of Wordpress MU into a fully functional social network platform. When I wrote about turning Wordpress MU into a social networking platform a little while back I never could have imagined the amount of interest it would generate. BuddyPress is my answer to that interest. BuddyPress will come as a suite of Wordpress MU plugins that will work seamlessly together. Each plugin handles a separate BuddyPress feature, meaning you can pick and choose which features you want to include.