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Community building: Using Ning's new platform, TR's reporter created a customized social network for macrophotography fans.
Credit: Wade Roush/Ning
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Cram Tokyo, Seoul, New York City, Mexico City, and Mumbai together into a single megalopolis, and its population would still be smaller than that of MySpace, the online social-networking juggernaut. And for a newbie, joining MySpace can feel much like being lost in a city with 120 million inhabitants. There are thousands of people around you who share your interests and could become your friends--but how to connect with them?
For Internet users who want to network with like-minded people without being subsumed into the madding crowd, there is now an alternative. Last week Ning, a Palo Alto, CA, startup cofounded in 2004 by online marketing executive Gina Bianchini and Netscape founder Marc Andreesen, launched a free Web application for creating and customizing boutique social networks--in effect, mini-MySpaces, or "social niche-works," as some are calling this new genre.
For example, I used Ning to create a social network especially for devotees of digital macrophotography. People who join my network have the ability to create their own personal profiles, upload photos, connect with friends, send instant messages, write their own blogs, contribute to forums, and the like. I created my Ning network in minutes using a simple Web interface reminiscent of the blog-building tools from sites such as Blogger, LiveJournal, TypePad, and WordPress. (Now, of course, I just have to recruit a few members.)
In fact, Ning makes setting up a custom social network as easy as starting a personal blog, possibly laying the groundwork for a new generation of Web destinations catering to the planet's endless variety of subcultures. During the yearlong beta-testing phase preceding last week's official launch, Ning users created more than 30,000 social networks, including groups for microbrew enthusiasts, Pez candy-dispenser collectors, natives of the tiny Caribbean nation of Curacao, and Phillips Andover Academy's class of 1972.
Mainstream social-networking sites such as MySpace and LiveJournal have long given users the ability to create and join specialized groups. More than 5,000 people belong to the black-and-white photography group on MySpace, for example. But Ning's custom social networks come with communications tools such as live chat rooms that aren't available on LiveJournal and other platforms. And Ning's networks seem to occupy a previously unfilled niche in the social-computing ecosystem: they provide an outlet for expression and communication that's more social than a solo blog yet less cacophonous than the forums afforded by the giant social-networking sites.
"It's a continual evolution," argues Bianchini, Ning's CEO. "The Web pages of the 1990s became the blogs of the 2000s. Now blogs are becoming social networks and communities."
To start a social network on Ning, users must first sign up for a free account. Ning's software then walks them through the design process step by step, allowing them to choose a name and description for the network, pick the features (such as blogs, photos, chat windows, and forums) that will appear on the network's main page, and arrange these features however they'd like. Networkers can go with one of a few dozen themes and color schemes provided by Ning, or, if they'd prefer, substitute their own HTML code and style sheets. "Everything is customizable," says Bianchini.
Members of social networks on Ning can even override the network's design, choosing their own themes or writing their own HTML for their personal pages. Control, in other words, is in the hands of the users. "People are doing really interesting things with their MySpace pages, but fundamentally, MySpace is still a walled garden much like the original AOL or Compuserve or Prodigy," Bianchini says. "There is a narrow and fixed view of what people can do, and you can see people pushing up against the limits."
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Comments
arpod on 03/09/2007 at 12:56 PM
1
Decent idea, I wish they would work to mimic some of the useful tools and features in other group sites such as Yahoo! and Google have.
I still feel that Yahoo! and Google don't meet my needs either. Features such as calendars, file libraries, database, and more would be helpful with Ning. I feel that this is a MySpace wannabe and not a group site wannabe, which is the type of users that will be utilizing it.
Imagine having a Ning account, being able to go in many “Social Networks” or non-social networks. I want a place where I can login, post pictures of my Jeep, write my comments on a school project in the forum, upload my part of a project for commenting, put up a template form for the people at work, have a sign up for my softball league, ask where I can recycle electronics in Philadelphia, find info on the new Nine Inch Nails album.. maybe watch the new video, create an event for the upcoming homecoming game and invite my fellow fraternity alumni, look at the rankings for my racquetball league, find a phone number of the director of my volunteering group, poll my family on what time and where we should meet for dinner on Friday, and comment on a new book all-in-one place. Is it too much to ask for?
wroush on 03/12/2007 at 8:18 PM
6
Yes, I'm afraid it's too much to ask, at least for now. I would also love to be able to do everything you described from one place. But right now Web programmers are having a hard enough time making small subsets of these functions work together in an easily scalable way.
You could use Ning to create a "social network" just for you and your family or your college classmates or your racquetball partners, and you could use it to post pictures of your Jeep, leave comments on a school project in the forum, and share personal reviews of books and music. But to find phone numbers or learn about recycling in Philadelphia you'd still have to go to a good old search engine or online white pages. To find the latest Nine Inch Nails video you're probably stuck going to iTunes or the band's page on MySpace. And to coordinate a dinner time with your family you'd have to go to someplace like Google Calendar.
Thanks to open APIs that characterize Web 2.0, all sorts of neat mashups and mergers of various Web applications are happening. But what you are asking for is a mega-personal-information-management suite, and that would take some central planning. It's difficult enough to get each component of your vision (calendar, photo sharing, etc.) working well; few programmers have the stomach to try to make them work together. Mitch Kapor's Open Source Applications Foundation started out trying something like this with Chandler but now they're calling it a mere "small workgroup collaboration suite."
I think it will eventually be possible to do all the things you mentioned, using a reasonably small collection of separate and (hopefully) interoperable tools. But I'm not sure there are many people who think of this as a high business priority right now. BTW, the blog Mashable.com is a great place to follow all of this.
-Wade Roush
danielonline on 11/27/2007 at 11:42 AM
1
http://www.crowdwine.com
http://www.everyvisitor.com
levkamensky on 12/27/2007 at 9:21 PM
1
One of the features Ning is boasting is the ability to create your own profile questions. But what they do not tell you (at least they did not tell me) is that, the more questions you make, the slower your Network is going to be. (Right now I have to wait 20 seconds for a page to load on my Network.) After they told me this was the case it was too late. I reduced the number of questions, but the members' profile answers are already stored in the system. They told me the information couldn't be deleted and my Network will always be slow. Again instead of accepting responsibility they played the blame game with me. They told me I was the only one on Ning who made so many profile questions, and that I was odd. It is funny hearing this from people who allegedly want to give Network creators freedom to be individualistic. Not to mention that they are very rude.
They say in an advertisement that you can create your own Social Network, but in reality it is more like your own forum or miniature network. The Groups feature of Ning Networks is very underdeveloped. For instance you can't approve group posts. This one-fit-all approach is why all Ning networks look the same.
Also, I got a death threat and when I complained they banned me from Network Creators forum. Most of the Networks on Ning are "dead", in part because Gina has a big head and will not accept advice on how to improve the site. They have been very rude and inhospitable to me.