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.

"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.

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?

The votes have been tallied and the results are in. OpenSocial Foundation members have selected Jay Parikh of Ning and Joseph Smarr of Plaxo as their community representatives.

Sixty-eight percent of the OpenSocial Foundation membership voted in the election. Parikh and Smarr were selected by members from 13 nominees. Each will serve a one-year term on the OpenSocial Foundation Board.

1. Virtual Places
2. Weather Bonk
3. Diggdot.us
4. Flash Earth
5. Adactio Elsewhere
6. Where's Tim Hibbard?
7. Elicit
8. 2RealEstate Auctions
9. Flickrmap
10. Streampad

All the usual API suspects are included in these mashups: Google Maps, Flickr, del.icio.us, Amazon. I tried out Virtual Places and was impressed that it includes little old New Zealand. Here is my hometown of Wellington:

I've been checking out mashups from other sites too, particularly Ning.com. A couple of note are Restaurant Reviews With Yahoo! Maps and Anytown Marketplace With Maps, the latest version of Jon Aquino's craigslists-like mashup.

Also the media companies are coming on board, led by BBC Backstage but also washingtonpost.com recently released an excellent site called mashingtonpost.com. Some interesting mash-ups that people have done already on mashingtonpost.com: News Cloud (a tag cloud), Ripped from the Headlines! (a daily news quiz), world map interface, thumbnail quiz of Arts & Entertainment stories, and washingtonpost.com search results via RSS.

This is an exciting time to be experimenting with mashups, whether you're a publisher, a 'user' or an API-wielding company. As Yahoo's Matt McAlister put it, "the idea is to make your content mash up ready and to build incentives for people to use your content." In that spirit, I've (finally) freed my own RSS feed under the Creative Commons, plus I'm currently trying my hand at mashups. Anyone can do it, so why not give it a try?

Right now, Facebook Pages can't be considered a complete social networking solution like Ning -- the feature set is just too limited and constricting, plus only businesses, brands/products, and artists can have them. But it is easy to see why Facebook Pages could be attractive to social media marketers. They're easy to set up and manage, and they come with access to a built in audience.

However, even if the coming changes noted by Smith add features to make Pages more complete mini-social networks, there are a lot of reasons why Facebook should not be looked at by companies as a Ning-alternative (or an alternative to any full branded social network provider). First and foremost, even though Facebook has shown some indications recently of being more open, they're still a very closed platform. Verizon may be making a mistake by putting all its eggs in one basket.

Facebook Pages should certainly be part of a social media strategy for businesses, brands, and artists, but it certainly shouldn't be the only part. Facebook's most popular Page, that of US presidential candidate Barack Obama, provides a good example of a complete social media strategy done right. In addition to his 900,000 strong Facebook Page, Obama has a presence on more than 10 other top social media sites including MySpace, Digg, Flickr, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. He also runs his own branded social network My.BarackObama.com. Obama's complete strategy has helped him to raise record amounts of money online during this campaign cycle and build awareness among the younger, Internet-centric demographic.

Unless Facebook transforms Pages into a Ning-like platform for hosting external branded social networks that hook into the Facebook social graph (which seems unlikely given Facebook's clear reluctance to open its walled garden, though it would be a very interesting twist -- and might actually be a Ning-killer), there's really no reason to follow Verizon's lead and use the site in place of a branded social network.

With Wufoo you can create your own online form and integrate it within your blog or website, or create a separate form page (which you can style). Other features include ability to email the form to people, RSS feeds to track usage, and a Report Manager. The process to create a form is very simple and it took me just a few minutes to create a test form, which I've copied and pasted below. There's lot's of Ajaxy goodness to make the process smooth and whizzy, but more importantly the end result is a useful one for website owners and bloggers. Here's my test questionaire, embedded into my blog (hopefully - I can't tell if it's working or not until I press 'publish'):

Update: It does work, but clicking 'Submit' takes the user away from my blog page. Also it'd be cool to have results automatically updated and displayed on this page.

Update 2: I've put the form on a separate page, because it was causing some display issues on my homepage.

Wufoo's business plan is subscriptions and by the looks of their page of examples, they're targeting everyone from software developers (for bug tracking) to mainstream website owners (e.g. create a wedding registration form). It's interesting to read how Wufoo came about - it was a product of Paul Graham's Y Combinator program for statups. Wufooer Chris Campbell wrote a useful post about the experience, entitled The Top 10 Questions Investors Asked Us.

The DIY Web App Market

Wufoo is the latest in a line of recent services that make building interactive Web apps easy. There are a number of new widget-builders - Snipperoo, PostApp are two that I've noted recently. Also Phil Sim launched WyaCracker in April.

In terms of online form builders, in addition to Wufoo there's The Form Assembly and JotForm (that I'm aware of). Also let's not forget the larger-scale DIY web app builders, like Ning, JotSpot, Ning, Zoho Creator, Dabble DB, DataMashups.com.

Overall, it's all part of a larger trend for web-based services that make creating interactive applications easy as pie - a great sign for the mainstreaming of Web20.