I've only recently stumbled upon Wiccle, so I'm itching to get my hands on the full Wiccle v1.0 release soon.
It's great to see a small company applying some radical thinking around CMS/Social network software, building up a cool framework from the ground up.
I have tried quite a few social network pacakges, here's what I make of them so far.
JOOMLA
Lots and lots of plugins, including some nice plugins, but they all sit on top of a clunky Joomla framework.
1.6 seems to be always on the horizon and they need to get a useful GROUPS system in place.
Jomsocial adds some useful features, but it's a pricey addon which should be in the core software.
ELGG
I like their plugin approach and simple database structure, but Elgg currently lacks a decent user interface.
They are making some progress on that front, but plugin developers have to play catch every time there is a change in the Elgg core releases.
DOLPHIN
I tried version 6 and soon got tired of the bugs, beta v7 looks slightly more promising, but I'm not impressed with the photo viewer/music player and video upload process.
The plugin releases seem to have dried up and there are lots of comments about rather unscrupulous plugin developers.
Social Engine
I've only tried the 10 day demo, but it's rather pricy for what it is, the plugins would really inflate the costs.
The bolted on apps were hidden away in a menu, there was no out of box file upload/download option and they were trying to copy facebook's interface too much.
Wordpress with BuddyPress
Solid Wordpress framework with awesome plugins for base Wordpress, but the recent BuddyPress v1.1 release just doesn't make sense to me.
The page layout is all over the shop and the groups/forums just don't seem to fit together.
I'm hoping Wiccle will provide some fresh air in this space.
