the increased level of interaction that voice/audio and even just real-time typing offers can increase productivity, inspires connection and thus teamwork and thus improves the whole experience.

1 - The community is still strong. ELGG is a niche product, so we cant expect the same acceptance that Wordpress, for example.

2 - We moved developement issues to github. We develop there and support here. Simple.

if ur interested to compare search trend interest in elgg to oxwall and other cms type solutions:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=elgg%2C%20%20oxwall%2C%20%20joomla%2C%20%20drupal%2C%20%20ning&cmpt=q

if we remove joomla, just to make the elgg part of the graph more visible, we can see that all of the keywords dropped in interest in the last 2 years or so:

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=elgg%2C%20oxwall%2C%20drupal%2C%20ning&cmpt=q

edit: hmm.. i just remembered that elgg is a town in europe.. so some of that elgg traffic is not related with this software

Its unfair compare elgg with joomla and drupal. joomla and drupal are popular CMS and Ning is a paid solution. Elgg is a social networking framework. its a out of a box solution

The direct competitor for Elgg is Oxwall, and comparing both, Elgg has more sucess.

https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=elgg%2C%20oxwall&cmpt=q

i provided the data to see overall 'desire to use software to host websites' and not to show direct like for like comparison of features.

"if we remove joomla, just to make the elgg part of the graph more visible, we can see that all of the keywords dropped in interest in the last 2 years or so"

Maybe we should make a skype room and an IRC. What do you think?

i am stopping using skype now since i discovered they are totally compromised from a security perspective.. i don't have anything to hide - but i dislike the issue on principle.

irc is fine for me.

@ura - I'm sure they can monitor IRC too.  If it's digital I just assume its monitored.

sure yes, i appreciate no digital data can be secured..
but at least irc can be open source

Here it is:

Chat online:

http://speedysnail6.info/elgg/irc/

Details:

Server: irc.esper.net

Channel: #elgg

I'm not sure if this would provide any use, though.