This is the first year I did not attend WordCamp San Francisco, the annual event that is the largest of the WordCamp gathering. It seems like I’m missing the announcement of some big news.

Matt Mullenweg announced during his State of the Word speech, thaa going forward, WordPress and WordPress MU (Multi-user) would be merged. In principle, this is not all that surprising, as WPMU offers a single major feature that WordPRess single user does not – the ability to have multiple blogs with a single install.

In talking to attendees of the event, there were few details given in this announcement but conventional wisdom suggests that, either during the installation process or later down the road, a blog administrator would have the ability to “flip a switch” and turn on the capabilities of the WordPress MU system.

This seems to segue with an earlier announcement from the event that the BuddyPress plugins that turn a WPMU installation into a social network, would be made available as compatible with WordPress blogs.

It’s also unclear when this merging of streams will actually occur, but my best guess is WordPress 2.9.

More details as we get them.