Only about three weeks to go until the Useful Visitors website is launched. We’re building an online community for the volunteering sector using open source social networking platform Elgg - so far we’ve been really impressed with what it can do.

Pretty much any social networking function that you can imagine is catered for, from the basics of creating a profile or sharing photos and videos, to more recent developments such as Twitter-style micro-blogging. And because it’s all built around an open source community, there are new plugins being developed all the time that mean we can continue to build on what we develop in phase one.

Useful Visitors is a web-based volunteering service that matches business travellers with host organisations in the developing world. See their coverage at Social Innovation Camp Dec 2008 for more info..