A local site is using Dolphin 7 to build a community site. Check out www.themiamivalley.com and see what Dolphin can do.

While the installed base of Drupal and Joomla both exceed where Dolphin is today, with the way things change on the web, it’s hard to say what will be the leader tomorrow.

From the Dolphin site:

Open-source, independent, downloadable, scalable, customizable, full-featured, free software for building social networks, dating sites and web-communities.Loaded with video chat, recorder, video player, forums, groups, events, video messenger, mailbox, desktop app, video sharing, photo sharing, iPhone app and much more. Build your own business or advance your hobby with Dolphin!

via BoonEx Dolphin – Smart Community Builder.

They have an intro video that has a voice over that’s almost comedic in it’s tone- but, shows a level of sophistication in marketing that other Open Source CMS systems have yet to reach.

Note, Dolphin isn’t entirely free- to remove links back to their site and totally own the brand you have to pay- but, compared to the cost of trying to assemble the whole thing in another CMS- it may be worth it.

We haven’t crawled under the hood of Dolphin yet- but we plan to. If you have any experience with Dolphin compared to Drupal or Joomla, we’d love to hear your feedback.