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Today Ning chairman and co-founder Marc Andreessen announced the "merger" of his company with a larger company, Glam Media. In other words, Glam acquired Ning. It's interesting to look back at the history of Ning, a DIY social networking service that launched in 2005 when the Web 2.0 tech boom was in full flow. I wrote about the launch of Ning in October 2005, here on ReadWriteWeb, nearly 6 years ago.

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.

"You are what you do, that's the philosophy of Mightybell," says Gina Bianchini, the former CEO of sprawling, Andreesen-backed network of social networks Ning, about her new startup Mightybell, which launches today. "We've spent the last 5 years calling success the number of friends, fans and followers we've accumlated - [but now] people using social software want more. Mightybell seeks to offer a simple way to take new social technologies and turn them into compelling experiences for people in the real world. We think the next innovation in social software will be its impact on daily life."

Mightybell opens a limited beta today and is charging $1 for access. (Cool idea.) Instead of publishing blog posts or random status messages, Mightybell users will publish experiences - with step-by-step instructions so that other users can sign on to have the same experiences themselves. "People of action think big and then act incrementally," Bianchini says. "Mightybell provides a lightweight way to structure that." It's an ambitious vision, making aspiration programmable, measured and social. Mightybell's not alone in this field, but Bianchini says she and her team's aim is to use their experience to out-execute competitors and build the richest, most compelling service in this emerging space. I don't know if it's going to work, but it's an interesting idea.

Ning announced a new feature today that will enable its users to broadcast video directly from their sites. The capabilities are a result of a partnership with Ustream, bringing the live streaming video capabilities to the social networking platform.

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.

After many months of rumor and speculation, Hulu announced yesterday that it will be launching a subscription service. Hulu Plus will give users access to more content on more platforms for a monthly fee of $9.99. And while it's surely not the most reliable metric, early reviews from the App Store indicate that some folks aren't too pleased with the change. The app (which is free) has a whopping one star rating, and the service itself has received mixed reviews.

Social networking site Ning announced its new pricing scheme today, following its announcement last month that it will abandon the freemium model and eliminate free subscriptions.

In an email to staff yesterday, new Ning CEO Jason Rosenthal wrote that "When I became CEO 30 days ago, I told you I would take a hard look at our business. This process has brought real clarity to what's working, what's not, and what we need to do now to make Ning a big success." With that, he announced Ning would be abandoning its longstanding business model and discontinuing non-paying sites on its network. In light of this, is it time to reevaluate and reign in some of the excitement about the freemium model for startups?

The social networking platform Ning announced today that it was making some substantial changes to the company. The news, coming just one month after Jason Rosenthal replaced Gina Bianchini as CEO, was sour for both employees and for many users of the service. Ning will cut 70 jobs and will end free subscriptions to the site.

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."

As more of the business world flattens with the expansion of online services, social networking is increasingly becoming a critical factor to success in many industries. Whether you're for a small businesses selling art at a craft fair or a Fortune 500 company trading on the stock exchange, social networking has the power to expand your brand among both your audience and fellow business owners. For the latter, entrepreneurs can take advantage of specialized social networks to meet, communicate share and partner with others.

Florida-based entrepreneur, business consultant and blogger Matthew Ringer recently posted an extensive list of the his top 40 Social Networking Sites Specifically for Small Business, Entrepreneurs, and Startups on his site Small Biz Bee. The list is an excellent resource for anyone looking to expand their professional network, but for those looking for a quick dose of business social networking, here are profiles of three great sites from Ringer's list for connecting with entrepreneurs.

Ning, the popular online service that allows users to create their own custom social networking sites, launched Ning Apps today. Ning Apps gives users the ability to embed over 90 new apps and widgets on their social networks. Given that Ning Apps is based on the OpenSocial standard, however, developers will surely create a lot more apps in the near future. Ning added basic OpenSocial support to its service last year. At that time, however, Ning only supported about 30 applications and users could only add OpenSocial applications to their own profiles but could not publish them on their network sites so that everybody could see them.

According to this year's Comscore stats, consumer publishing platform Wikia has surpassed DIY social network competitor Ning for monthly unique visitors. Since July 2008 the company's traffic has more than doubled from 2.8 million to 6.5 million unique US visitors per month. Despite abandoning Wikia search in early March, it seems Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has built another great company. As of this evening, Wikia's CEO Gil Penchina is announcing the company's profitability due to its custom sponsorships program.