Sad but true. When our clients ask for social networking we almost always them advise them to use Drupal. Its user profile system is comparable to Joomla's Community Builder, but Drupal is a better choice because of its immensely powerful groups system. Using Organic Groups, Drupal users can create and manage their own groups, adding on dozens of other features from forums and blogs to photo galleries and even registrations. If Joomla is going to compete for social networking sites, it needs groups. It needs Group Jive, the one extension attempting to meet that need.

Unfortunately, things haven't looked good recently. Development moved to a new site, slowed down and finally at the end of May, the developers of Group Jive admitted that the extension's development "hasn't proceeded like you expected". They asked for help.

The good news is that the request worked. Mark Raborn, the Program Manager, posted that the GJ development team now has 23 people on board. A roadmap is apparently in the works and the release of GroupJive 1.5 now has a new lease of life.

Good news for GJ and good news for Joomla! as a whole. Head on over to GroupJive.org and find out more.