So what does Ning do? Users can take parts from various web apps and build something unique and personalized. The Ning FAQ explains: "Our goal with Ning is to see what happens when you open things up and make it easy to create, share, and discover new social apps."

Fred over at TechCrunch has profiled it and he wrote:

"It means anyone can now get their ideas out there and build a project (some people would call it a mash-up) in a few clicks, with no developer experience. And if you are a developer, you can pop under the hood and change it to your liking, no questions asked."

It sounds absolutely amazing, so I can't wait to have a play. The Ning team is excited on their blog. This is just the start of the big announcements this week, btw...

"Alex -- your description of what we are trying to do is very well said. It's an experiment, but those are the goals.

We are going to see if we can generate enough revenue through a blend of advertising (like Google, Yahoo, etc.) and premium services to be able to support what we are doing, including the free developer accounts."

So advertising and premium services are the main business models, at this point. I also wonder whether Ning will in future arrange to get a slice of any revenue that services built with Ning make. For example, if someone creates a mash-up that brings in advertising revenue, maybe Ning should get a cut? I'm not sure if that's viable or not.

I noticed that Alex did the good Microsoft employee bit at the end of his post when he said:

"I'm not privy to discussions taking place at higher echelons of Microsoft but the trend is clear. Microsoft has been banging on about web as a platform for a while now. Microsoft is running with it, indeed driving much of it, and plenty more to come...we're not the only ones though."

Well, I'll accept the "running with it" bit ;-) Although I do think Microsoft is doing interesting things in the Web 2.0 space.

But anyway, back to Ning. I checked out their blog tonight to see what new services have been created using Ning (I haven't had time to dive into the development area). The Bay Area Hiking Trails is nicely done - I think by Jonathan Aquino, but I couldn't find any mention of it on his blog. The other services didn't look that exciting: a bookshelf, a Storyteller app, something called Confess!. It's early days though and Ning is an intriguing development in the web services mash-ups era, so let's see what develops.

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.

While other social networks have obviously provided their users with access to these kinds of apps and widgets for a long time already, this is a major step forward for Ning. Ning, according to its own stats, currently hosts over 1.5 million different social networks (how many of these are active is a different question, however) and has about 33 million registered users. If Ning wants to continue to compete with Facebook and other social networks, it simply needs this kind of open development environment to provide its users with the right set of features, though it also looks like Ning actually has an Apple-like approval process for new apps in place.

Ning is also an active proponent of OpenSocial and hosts a vast directory of OpenSocial apps that its users can use on their profile pages and networks.

Ning raised $60 million last April, and if Dan Frommer's calculations are right, it currently has an annual revenue of about $10 million from paid accounts, premium features, and advertising.

Compared to Facebook and MySpace, Ning, of course, is only a niche product, but it has clearly found its place in the social networking space.

The Ustream integration will let Ning users embed both live and recorded video into their sites. In addition to the video content, the new feature will also make available live chats so that people watching the event can also participate.

Ning boasts over 2 million Ning networks, and the video broadcasting integration is well-suited for many of these, particularly ones associated with education. The Ustream feature is only available, however, to Ning Plus and Pro subscribers (not to the Ning Minis, which are free for educators).

But with the possibility to broadcast tutorials or workshops or discussions, it does seem as though this video integration will make upgrading to a paid subscription very appealing for many users of the social network.

"You can now set up your own Craigslist-style marketplace for free and without any coding (as the app owner, just drag-and-drop categories where you want them, then add, edit, or delete right there on the app).

When you clone it, it retains the categories youíll find on Craigslist, but you can also add, edit, or delete categories so your new marketplace app is relevant to your area."

I need to look into it more closely, but the concept sounds great. I only hope it can be exported to craigslist-less New Zealand! :-) Update: I'll be darned, there is a craigslist here.

For now, users can only add OpenSocial applications to their profiles, but not to their networks. This will change, however, once future versions of OpenSocial are developed, as Caroline McCarthy reports.

By adding support for OpenSocial, Ning is joining a growing number of social networks that support this standard, including MySpace, hi5, Orkut, and Bebo. For developers, supporting OpenSocial makes good sense, as they can reach a far larger audience with an OpenSocial application than if they just programmed for a given network's own APIs. The only hold-out with regards to supporting OpenSocial is Facebook, though Facebook is also considering the option of opening up its development platform to other social networks in the future.

Ning itself is growing nicely and just celebrated the creation of its 500,000th network. By supporting OpenSocial, Ning now gains the ability to offer its customers an even larger array of options, though it would have been nice if Ning already supported OpenSocial apps on network pages and not just on profiles.

Ning Pro: Offers unlimited membership, full control over branding, multimedia options including music uploads and branded players, and advanced customization. Price: $49.95 per month or $ 499.95 per year.

Ning Plus: Offers unlimited membership, full control over branding, and features including events, groups, chat, pages and Ning Apps. Ning Plus will also offer advanced customization options including the ability to edit CSS, add Javascript and make use of a Language Editor. Price: $19.95 per month or $199.95 per year.

Ning Mini: Offers access to Ning's core features including, blogs, photos, forums and video embeds, and the added ability to run custom advertising. Price: $2.95 per month or $19.95 per year.

In addition to ending their promotional links and advertising, Ning also announced they'd be replacing the Ning ID with a custom sign-in system, as well as support for Facebook Connect and Twitter authorization; adding new APIs to allow mobile and desktop application development; increasing sites' design flexibility; and adding enhanced reporting and analytics information. For those who are currently using the system but plan to move elsewhere, Ning will also offer a content migration tool.

"Our Network Creators are some of the most passionate and creative users of social networking technologies on the web, and by focusing on our three new product offerings, Ning will be able to extend the power and control we bring to our customers," said Ning CEO Jason Rosenthal.

The passion of Ning users was evident in the aftermath following the company's decision in April to end the free subscriptions. Many educators who found Ning to be particularly useful for both classroom communication and for professional development were worried about the impact Ning's decision would have on their networks, as well as on their limited budgets.

In response, Ning indicated today that K-12 educators would be able to continue to have access to free Nings, in the form of Ning Minis sponsored by an as-yet-unnamed educational company. While it's unclear at this time what kind of control that company will have over teachers' Nings and whether or not they will be able to market or message to their members, many teachers seemed cautiously optimistic about today's announcement and were happy that the company had responded to their outcry.

The website Free Technology Tools for Teacher noted that "Ning Mini won't replace the old free Ning accounts, but they should still be useable for classroom settings. Though with a cap of 150 members it probably won't be useable for building a community Ning around a whole school or PTA." And in a move that echoes what many users of Ning have been thinking, the website offered a link to a list of Ning alternatives.

Since that time Ning has negotiated the often rocky terrain of changing web trends. In 2005, mash-ups were all the rage and so Ning started out as a way to help you blend different web services together to create a "social application." This was the era when MySpace was the leading social network (it was acquired in July 2005 by News Corp.). Ning ultimately evolved to become a fully fledged social website builder. The history of Ning neatly explains how it fits into Glam Media's business, so let's take a closer look.

One of my favorite niche social networks created on Ning, Tu Diabetes.

To its credit, Ning has stayed true to its original mission and indeed expanded on it. Ning became not just a service to create social apps, but social networks.

Its biggest challenge has undoubtedly been adjusting to the mammoth success of Facebook, which considerably reduced the demand for DIY social networks. Why create your own social network when you could create a Facebook Page and tap into Facebook's network effects (i.e. its massive user base)? This caused Ning a lot of grief and the company experimented with various business models in order to survive. Which ultimately led it into the arms of Glam Media.

Glam Media was also founded in 2005, as a "social blog community." It now specializes in niche websites across many verticals, with brand advertising the business model. Glam particularly targets brand advertising for women. The network has more than 2,500 publishers.

Unlike Ning, Glam Media has enjoyed steady growth over the years. It's currently one of comScore's top 10 Web properties in the U.S., with over 80 million monthly unique visitors from the USA. Glam puts the worldwide figure at over 200 million unique visitors.

However, Glam Media's U.S. traffic has declined by about 10 million uniques per month over the past year, according to comScore. So the acquisition of Ning will help in that regard. Andreessen stated that Ning will add 40 million global unique visitors to Glam's 200 million.

Overall, this seems like a great deal for both parties. In terms of product, it is a close fit: Glam's vast network of niche vertical websites, together with Ning's 100,000 niche social networks. While it may not have been a dream financial outcome for Ning - given the amount of funding it ate through over 6 years - as a product it evolved well. The existence of niche social networks like Tu Diabetes has benefited me over the years, so the demand for a service like Ning won't go away.

Rosenthal writes in the press release, "We will phase out our free service. Existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning."

But the service has long been used by many small groups and organization, many of which are in a tail-spin over today's announcement. Educators in particular have found Ning to be useful, as both a tool for classroom collaboration and for professional development. Tom Whitby, founder of the Educator PLN Ning, expressed his frustrations this morning: "Ning is throwing us under the bus."

Lisa Sjogren, a technology coordinator for the Osseo Area Schools in Minnesota echoed the frustrations of many teachers, noting that Ning's decision was a "big headache" that threw a wrench in a six-month-long, district-wide technology integration and standards project. Like many educators and non profits who work with limited budgets, Sjogren is now tasked with finding a new site where she can host her project for free. For teachers that already struggle to convince their districts to not block social networking sites, requesting funding to join or host sites might not be feasible.

Ning is, of course, not the only platform for creating personalized and private social networks. This afternoon, many educators shared suggestions for alternatives via Twitter. Here are a few other free and open-source options.

• Buddypress (http://www.buddypress.org)
• Pligg (http://www.pligg.com/)
• Elgg (http://www.elgg.org/)
• LovdbyLess (http://lovdbyless.com/)
• Mixxt (http://www.mixxt.com/)
• Insoshi ( http://github.com/insoshi/insoshi)
• Xoops (http://www.xoops.org/)
• Community Engine (http://www.communityengine.org/)
• Astrospaces (http://sourceforge.net/projects/astrospaces/)

While many are looking at Ning's announcement today as a reflection on the success or failure of a freemium model, for many users of Ning's free services, that lesson is a bitter one.

When I first heard about DataMashups.com, I immediately wondered if they are targeting non-technical users as well as developers - given that Ning has had problems gaining traction amongst non-developers (who Ning targeted). Tony Thomas from DataMashups.com explained:

"We're clearly targeting the developer market. We're relatively recent to the online development idea, having been quietly working on distributed data and data integration. But once we got into the model of doing the development online, we see a lot of potential for this technology in the enterprise. Having such tools setup in the enterprise could open the door to interesting new applications with enterprise data, since enterprise developers can try out new applications with no setup required, and small investments of their time."

So the enterprise is a key market for DataMashups.com. Is there a consumer market aspect to their plans too? Tony said:

"We're not as sure about the online service, and whether there is a viable business there. It should serve as an easy way for new prospects to try the product, and expose us to new ideas and requirements. But we do not expect it to be a significant revenue opportunity for us. Would be great to be surprised on the upside there, but we're not expecting that."

Check out DataMashups.com and let me know how it compares to Ning, Zoho Creator and the recently launched Dabble DB (my write-up of that is on ZDNet).

The San Francisco based social groupware provider Grou.ps announced today that it has secured a Series A round of financing for $1.1 Million in a deal led by Golden Horn Ventures. Grou.ps has also announced that it is open sourcing a restricted version of its code under the Affero Public License.

Grou.ps aims to provide users with a comprehensive set of tools to collaborate online and currently has about 200,000 active users worldwide.

Going Open Source

In open-sourcing its application, Grou.ps is following in the steps of a growing number of formerly closed source online services that have decided to go this route lately, with Reddit probably being the most prominent one. Grou.ps argues that this move will allow them to commoditize the Grou.ps platform and give them a competitive advantage to hire the most talented programmers from the pool of open source contributors.

However, opening up the code is not a panacea for developers by any means - while some programs flourish once a lot of developers get their hands on the code, others have a hard time developing an active developer community around their open source offerings.

Grou.ps' closest competitor, Ning, has a considerably larger user base and offers a very similar service. However, while Ning has advertising on its pages, grou.ps does not - though you can add your own AdSense code to the site. Ning, so far, has raised about $104 Million in four funding rounds.

Disclosure: Grou.ps founder Emre Sokullu has been a contributor to ReadWriteWeb in the past.

Founded by Oracle Corporation's Paul Pedrazzi (pictured here) and discussed on the Oracle AppsLab blog, the first teleconference meeting is scheduled for this Wednesday morning. (PST) It will begin with a 30 minute talk by guest speaker Oracle Chief Privacy Council Peter Lefkowitz, followed by a 30 minute open discussion.

The group is "not affiliated with Oracle or any other company," but it's nice to see some heavy-hitters getting involved as individuals.

Context

Building momentum for new paradigms, tools and strategies is something that gets easier when you've got other smart people in similar circumstances available to talk to.

If high-value guest speakers can continue to be lined up and the discussions are well moderated, I expect that this group and others like it will be very well received. There's certainly a growing number of people hungry for collective learning in their efforts to drive change in large organizations. Those are the people who will help keep the big companies relevant - something that cannot be taken for granted in a time of extreme disruption.

Ning

Let's start with the most familiar such service, Ning. It's the most talked about and was founded by Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame. Ning started out in a flurry of web 2.0 hype in October 2005 as a mashup builder tool, but the current incarnation of Ning is styled as "Your Own Social Network for Anything". This Monday Ning announced a whopping investment round of $44 Million. Andreessen noted in his blog that Ning will be "substantially expanding our product plans -- we have a long list of features and product capabilities we plan to add as fast as we possibly can". So the $44M will allow them to "staff up" and pump out those new features, as well as scale for expected growth.

PeopleAggregator

One of the first custom social network services was Marc Canter's PeopleAggregator (disclosure: I used to do some consulting work for PA a year or so ago). Marc Canter has long held a vision for, and evangelized on his blog and at events, an open social network service - with an emphasis on open. It's fair to say that Ning has muscled in on this market and gotten more press than PeopleAggregator over the past year or two. Nevertheless, PeopleAggregator is a solid offering and has implemented many of the ideas and features that Canter has been talking about for years - for example the notion of an "identity hub". It is both an open source Social Network solution that can be downloaded and even forked, while at the same time being a white label offering and a free hosted service. PeopleAggregator has a mix of free and paid options. See our post a year ago for more details.

Many PA social networks are white label, but a couple of public examples are GT Channel and Connect at EconSM.

vibEngine

The third service we'll discuss here is vibEngine, from Vibe Capital. Originally based in Perth, Australia, the founders Clay and Rachel Cook are now firmly planted in Silicon Valley - in fact right down the road from Mr Techcrunch himself! Perhaps they figured that to compete with Andreessen and his formidable Silicon Valley network, they needed to be at the center of the action too.

The main difference between Ning and vibEngine is that Ning is a free, automated and easy-to-use solution, whereas vibEngine styles itself as a "professional tailored solution". In other words, vibEngine is a white label offering (it's not free) and they will help set up custom social networks for their customers. PeopleAggregator is a mix between the two. Another subtle difference with vibEngine is that it specializes in providing "ranked-advice communities".

I spoke to Clay Cook about vibEngine, because at first I couldn't see how they are competing with Ning or even PeopleAggregator - as it doesn't have a free offering. Clay explained that their aim is "to build many wholly owned subsidiaries" that use the vibEngine technology. They also plan to license vibEngine to large existing websites and startups. Currently they have 2 wholly owned subsidiaries - Minti (a social network for parents) and Refurber (ironically, a social network for DIY folks), both of which were founded by Clay and his wife Rachel. The pair also recently launched a partner license site at buildinginlondon.com (a social network for London homeowners). There are plans for more such partnerships and licensed sites.

Conclusion

What all of these services have in common is that they provide a bundle of tools for creating a social network - complete with all the 'web 2.0' features you can think of, such as blogs, photo sharing, video sharing, RSS, tags, personal messaging, email, friends lists, discussions, privacy options, etc. There is no real 'winner' when comparing the three services we've mentioned in this post - Ning, vibEngine, PeopleAggregator. Each has its specific market and each is differentiated well from the others. It's certainly an interesting market though and, with the social networking craze showing no signs of slowing, one that will only grow.

What do you think of each of these services? If you have used one (or more) of them, please leave a comment telling us about your experience. Indeed, how many custom-made social networks are you currently a member of?