Ning.com

29Apr07

Social networks are all the rage, so why not create your own? Is your lack of programming skills stopping you. With Ning, you don’t need any. You can create your own social network in a matter of minutes.

The closest we got to in 1.0 was groups. Groups in web 1.0 were more like discussion forums that were closed to a group of friends you could invite. There were groups everywhere in web 1.0, from mass consumption sites like Yahoo! to niche sites like Gay.com.

With Ning, you can do much more. You can add video and photo sharing just by clicking, dragging and dropping. This is a vast improvement over Ning’s original beta and definitely a step up from the stuff we could do in web 1.0. If you’ve got the geek streak, you can edit the source code and extend the application anyway you like.

The only downside is that all the Ning members you have really go into a great big “Ning” member database. In other words, you are helping them to create a large database of registered users.
Neat Stuff

• No need to know programming to create a social network!
• Create social network in minutes
• Easily customise the look & feel
• Click to add video sharing
• Click to add photo sharing
• Click to add RSS
• Click to add blogging engine

End note: Anyone of you tried Ning Beta? In Beta, you could do photo wars, instantly create Google maps, etc. I was even able to create a “share secrets” network with Google maps. What’s available now is pretty watered down although it’s much easier to set up social networks than Ning Beta.

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