Maybe my expectations were too high. Maybe I misinterpreted what they were doing. Who knows. But I was really expecting something great from Telligent System's Community Server and it feels like it is lacking. Don't get me wrong, it is some exceptional work. Well, each of the Community Server applications are exceptional - by themselves. However, with the combination of great minds like Rob Howard (ASP.NET Forums), Jason Alexander (nGallery), and Scott Watermaysk (.Text) I was expecting the integration of these exceptional applications to be better.

I was hoping to see things like:

• Blog post comments as threaded forum discussions. It would be cool to make a post or an article and have this full forum threaded discussion with the post.
• Better integration of gallery posts and blog posts. So they are sort of one and the same. Similar to posting an article to a .Text blog, but with photos.
• Ability to start a forum discussion from a blog post.
• Same way to post a comment to a forum thread, a photo, or a blog post.
• Single search combining blog posts (and related discussion/comments), forum discussions, photo gallery posts, etc.
• Overall things brought together more - styled like a blog with threaded discussions, posts, photos, but all one and the same app. Now that would be cool. Know what I mean?

I do realize that this is the first attempt to integrate these application. And it's a beta release. Like I said, each of the apps are all exceptional by themselves. You can't beat the outstanding work put into these applications. But they are all still separate applications, although they do all share the same administration area now. Not that I am complaining about the apps, I guess I was just expecting too much (especially for the first release). But when you bring together developers seen as rockstars in the community, you can't help but to expect greatness. I do expect that there will be more in store for Community Server as each release comes out. All in all, still worth checking out.