HydePark concept is kinda unique i think , and is an evolution for Arab Community online.

The group blogging concept is smiler to Citizen Journalism, and the way they intend to go with it takes interactivity to a knew level. i actually had this idea few years before and was going to do it.

Having a Digg like functionality enable users to filter best posts which is an added value. and unlike digg clones to the Arab world, the content is produced by the users of HydePark.

HydePark features are like what a Russian startup called Profy is doing.

They for example mix blogging with Social networking features like HydePark. look what TechCrunch said about that:

“It is this social aspect that could help to distinguish Profy, if enough people bother to sign up. Right now, blogs are already social in that any reader can leave a comment on a post. But imagine if you could search for any blogger or commenter and send that person a private message, or check out that persons public feed to see what they are reading. It seems like a natural evolution, bringing the worlds of blogging and social networking closer together.”

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/09/social-blogging-platform-profy-launches-in-alpha/

http://profy.com/

Bringing social networking to Blogging adds value it gives more interactivity and allow readers to communicate with each other, just recently Blogger added blog followers, Facebook now is testing FB connect. Google has Friend connect.

this surely seems interesting, as the forums indeed are much more spreaded, but it lacks many of the flexibility and features that (in my idea) will eventualy lead to its death.

i’m afraid that the efforts in the new HydePark is a response to the new “social” Buzz in the internet, in fact, it seems really interesting to bring the strength of several social and web 2.0 ideas together (forums-like discussions, blogging, ratings, sharing, connections… etc), and how they actually complement each other!

social networking sites (such facebook) made a strong move and attempt to bring web2.0 into social networks, and they became very successful and strong, to the level that people don’t need to use other sites, everything is there, twitting, blogging, connecting, discussing, sharing… etc etc.

However, the competetion is very high in that area, sites want to bring as much people as they can, and users are lost between tens of websites and services that the like to use.. and eventually, people are overwhilmed with hundreds of sites claiming the same features.

so, to compete with all of these existing services and sites, u need to bring something new, innovative, and easy to adopt… maybe this thing is an easy navagation, maybe a totally new feature.

HydePark seems promising, i hope it becomes a success.