Social networking provider Ning yesterday announced that it now hosts half a million social networks on its platform. Ning launched in February 2007 and has seen rapid growth and mainstream adoption ever since. According to Ning's co-founder and CEO Gina Bianchini, Ning users now create a new social network every 30 seconds. As Dan Farber reports, 65 percent of these social networks are currently active and 3 percent of Ning's users are paying $19.95 a month for Ning's premium service.
Ning's premium service allows users to use Ning on their own domain and run their own ads (or decide not to run ads at all).
Some of Ning's most popular networks include Chris Pirillo's Geeks! Network, a network for the Ellen DeGeneres show, and rapper 50 Cent's social network. While Ning has a number of competitors, including KickApps and Crowdvine, Ning clearly leads the pack in terms of its user-base.
Ning is also very popular among academics and teachers, who often use it to set up networks and blogs for their classes instead of relying on more commercial platforms like Facebook or MySpace or having to use cumbersome class management software.
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I run a network for my neighborhood on Ning (http://willowglen.ning.com). I love Ning for the basic tools that it provides, but for niche networks, like local, there are a lot of functions that would have to be built custom. Ning does a great job of covering 80% of the use cases for any network though and it's incredibly easy to manage.
Posted by: Ryan Kuder | October 7, 2008 10:27 AM
I appreciate what Ning is doing a lot, but I found that its control over content and what gets featured where was severely lacking. For straight-up social networking and discussion, it's pretty good, but as soon as you want more editorial control and the ability to "steer" users to the right places as a site admin, it gets dicey.
Another social network provider that recently launched Ning-like features is CollectiveX, which what I've started using. It's not perfect, but it's a solid service with lots of great controls (some for a small monthly fee) and an active user community. If you find Ning doesn't quite fit the bill, you should give that a whirl.
Posted by: Jared White | October 7, 2008 1:07 PM
@Ryan - there are a couple of sites that are geared towards more local groups. The one that I heard was doing pretty well was Qlubb - my cousin uses it for her playgroup and loves it-- this may or may not be the type of local features you are referring to.
One slight correction in the article: "3 percent of Ning's users are paying $19.95 a month for Ning's premium service".
I would say it's 3% of the Ning's created as opposed to "users" who frequent the service which I would imagine is much larger than 500,000 -- although I don't know if there are any published numbers out there. Would that put their premium service revenue at: $300,000 per month. Not bad for a company valued at more than $500M
Posted by: Musica | October 7, 2008 3:47 PM
Sorry, my previous comment had a "wink wink" hint of sarcasm at the end but I used greater than and less than signs and I think it interpreted as HTML and stripped it.
Posted by: Musica | October 7, 2008 3:49 PM
I don't get Ning. I've been a skeptical outsider for months, wondering how many of their hundreds of thousands of networks actually get used, and why Ning is better than (a) a big social network for actual social networking, or (b) a web site for smaller groups. But recently I became one of Ning's new networks every 30 seconds, and my skepticism remains. It was totally lame. I would have been embarrassed to invite my friends to it.
Posted by: Dan | October 8, 2008 6:57 AM
@Dan: yeah I ask myself the same question. Every time I searched for a technical topic network on Ning, it seems I can find many of them, but they each have 3-4 members at most. (Then perhaps it's not the place to search for that...)
In the end, is it not counterproductive to have so many networks for the same topic? It seems to divide the crowd who would otherwise naturally end up in the same place, and prevents network effects from kicking in.
Posted by: fsav | October 8, 2008 8:13 AM
Ning is decent a tool, but I do find it hard to expand and reach out to other communities and members. Some in cases I find the same communities but with just a different name. Overall I think they have some great features people will like.
Posted by: Robert | October 8, 2008 2:21 PM
I like Ning, as a platform which gives me an oppotunity to think more about the content and people of you network then about tecnical issues. Of course it is not ideal - some things may be improved, but there are plenty of tuning instruments on Ning and you can do almostly everything you want. Also support team is very friendly. It is also true that many of networks are for 2-10 people but we have to deal with nonprofessionals there - they are not experienced enouhg to promote there communities fast.
Posted by: Yuriy | October 8, 2008 4:26 PM
I find the Ning platform to be extremely frustrating when it comes to customizing it to meet your needs. I'm considering the Elgg open source social networking framework but it also needs a lot of work to provide the features I need.
Posted by: Robert S. Robbins | October 9, 2008 6:51 AM
Hello!
Thanks for the post and the comments about Ning. We love getting feedback from people who use the platform.
If you have any other suggestions or comments, you can reach out to us at http://www.help.ning.com/?go=contact. Attn:Laura will get it to me quickly.
Thank you!
Laura
Community Manager
Ning
Posted by: Laura | October 9, 2008 3:35 PM
Whatever the obstacles of customizing it, they seem to be really successful which was proven by the number that they reached in about 2 years...
Posted by: MGA | October 10, 2008 2:25 PM