We've covered NY-based BricaBox several times before as they have moved through their private Beta. Yesterday I stopped by their office in Chelsea to learn more about their public beta launch today. They call themselves a "social content platform" and allow users to create robust sites that are bigger than a blog but smaller than a full-blown CMS like Drupal.

The easiest way to think about BricaBox is that it's like a blog or wiki plus widgets already installed and ready for your choosing to create sites like a photo mashup with Google Maps, or a directory of x resources with Compete traffic charts. The sites are completely customizable and a new feature they've added allows new users to "dupe" a BricaBox to create their own -- making it very easy to have a starting point to build from.

The first question I asked the team is about comparisons to Ning, Magnify and KickApps. CEO Nate Westheimer said that BricaBox is different because they are more like a CMS with a social network. Westhimer also walked me through his Bricabox, Nate's List.

I asked Westheimer about their business model. He shared that it will have three components: pro accounts, rev share when the user selects to run advertising and an ad buyout option on white-label services.

My initial suggestion for them is to create a BricaBox to be their show-off site. Something bigger than Nate's List - maybe a Celebrity list site that shows locations that some big celeb has been around to in NYC. They need something to draw in new users and show the power of the tool to get users engaged enough to want to build their own.

The company is bootstrapped with friends and family helping out currently. They are looking for a PHP developer, contact them via the BricaBox site if interested.

Check our previous BricaBox coverage. Here's Westheimer with CTO Kyle Bragger:

Here's their demo video of how to use the tool: