Do You Ning?

Long time reader Andy Strote of Context Creative poses a timely question of the day to you, oh faithful One Degree readers:

Can you ask subscribers if anyone is using Ning to create groups? What are their experiences, limitations, etc? Can it be integrated into other sites? Feel like I’m living under a rock, having just heard of Ning.

Bonus question – if you do know about Ning, where did you first hear of it?

Comments

[Judy Gombita]

I've heard of Zing (first mention was several weeks ago on the MapleWIT listserv; it was recommended as an alternative to LinkedIn), but not Ning. Are they affiliated?!

https://www.xing.com/

[Rick Couture]

Had never heard of Ning before today. The pages sure load slow...I have 2 yahoo groups I have been wanting to switch to another format where I can control the ad content, but have not found a good solution yet - does Ning allow users to control the ad content? Do users get a share of ad revenue?

[John]

I originally signed up to Ning last fall. At the time it was just too technical to build an app from scratch and there were not many apps that you could clone their code (I didn't need a hot or not or flickr group).
I heard about it through techcrunch or one of the web 2.0 blogs.

It sounds like they made the application easier to use but I'm not interested in having to display their ads or sharing revenue to display my ads if the site becomes successful.

[June Macdonald]

It's in the Globe today, didn't realize it's Netscape founder Marc Andreessen's, so might be worth a look:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070228.wnetscapr0228/BNStory/Technology/home

[James]

Ning shows a ton of promise...

But that's about it so far. I took it for a spin around the block when it first came out last summer and it didn't really work for me -- too technical to build new apps on the Ning platform, too complicated to understand the value proposition / problem it solves.

I watched their demo relaunch on Scoble's Podtech (http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1373/build-your-own-social-space-with-ning-version-2) and it looks impressive but the site's been b00rked since the relaunch. Basically the new value proposition seems to be easy-to-build hosted websites that offer built-in profile setup, security and social networking to go with some standard website apps -- blogs, forums, forms, RSS.

So there is promise but I don't think they're delivering on the promise yet.

(Disclosure: I'm working on a tangentially competitive product called Notionlab - www.notionlab.com)