Elgg.com Provides Organizations With a Private Social Networking Alternative

NEW YORK and LONDON (June 2, 2010) -- Curverider Limited, the company behind the award-winning Elgg open source social networking software (Elgg.org), has announced that on Monday, June 14th at 9am ET it will begin sending out the first beta invites to its hosted Elgg.com service, scheduled to launch this Fall. It will also make available a Demo of the service on June 14 for prospective users to try at its website. The new hosted Elgg.com service is aimed primarily at businesses, educational institutions and other organizations and will provide them with their own full-featured private or public social hub. The service has been developed in response to customer demand for a hosted version of the popular open source Elgg software, and meets industry demand for a cost-effective social networking alternative that addresses the hot topics of privacy and content ownership.

Curverider has unveiled a list of features and pricing options for the Elgg.com hosted service, which will be offered as a monthly subscription without the requirement for long term contracts. The service builds on the collaborative and open ethos that has made Elgg a leader in social software, ensuring network owners keep full ownership and control of their data and content.

Commenting on the announcement, Dave Tosh, co-founder of Elgg said, "Our hosted Elgg.com service could not be coming at a better time for the many businesses, universities and schools who've told us they want the features and stability of Elgg but don't want to have to download and host it themselves. We're offering organizations their own social hub with everything they need to connect, share and collaborate both internally and with the wider web. Our monthly subscriptions start at $29.95 and are per network rather than per user. I'm absolutely delighted with the response we've had to date, with thousands of organizations pre-registering for a beta invitation to the service."

Tosh added, "We've listened to the privacy and data ownership concerns that are rife in the industry and have developed Elgg.com to address them. Network owners can export all their data at any time at the click of a button. This gives them the ultimate flexibility: if they decide to bring the whole network in-house, even if it's just to take a backup, they can export the data to their servers, download the open source Elgg software for free at Elgg.org and they're good to go."

Elgg.com continues to accept registrations for the service and will accelerate the volume of beta invitations over the Summer.

Note to Editors

Elgg, the award-winning social platform on which the hosted Elgg.com service is based, delivers the tools and resources that enable individuals, companies and other organizations to create their own fully-featured social hub. It was created in 2004 specifically for social networking and has grown to become the platform of choice for thousands of networks worldwide. The open source software powers networks for businesses such as Wiley Publishing, major universities such as Harvard and Stanford and governments including the Federal Canadian Government and the State of Ohio.

Further information can be found at the web sites http://www.elgg.com and http://www.elgg.org.