Tech Review: The thing about Ning
November 24, 2009 by Al Harris
As if you weren’t already saturated enough with social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter … along comes Ning.
Ning has actually been around since 2004 and has more than 37 million registered users. The concept is fairly simple: you sign up and start your own social networking site.
Instead of being part of one big club, you get to start your own club that others can join. The idea is to create a site for your particular niche; for example, there are several regional Nings about fly-fishing where fly fishermen can sign up and talk to each other in a chat room or on message boards. They can post photos or videos of their expeditions, which only other members of that particular Ning can see.
BizSense already has a Facebook page and a Twitter account, so why not a Ning? (Not to be confused with Microsoft search engine Bing)
Setting up is really easy. Just submit your email address, create a password, create a title and description for your Ning and, voila, you now have your very own social networking site with its own URL. Ours is http://bizsense.ning.com.
You can pick and choose the features you want and how you want them to be laid out on the screen. For example, you can create a forum for members to discuss various topics. So on the BizSense Ning, members could ideally talk about business news they are hearing out on the street. There is also a chat feature, so members who are on the site can talk to each other live. One possible use for this is to schedule a chat for members to talk to BizSense reporters.
Other features allow you to upload images and videos. One neat thing is that it sets up an email address to which you can send pictures and videos and it will automatically upload them to the site. You can also set up a blog.
But the more I play with it, the more my head spins. There are so many options and bells and whistles that it is easy to get lost and create a cluttered site. I looked at a few other Nings and they are chaotic, and some of them bring to mind the worst of MySpace: crazy clashing backgrounds, clusters of useless widgets, and lots and lots of clutter. However, with Ning the power is in your hands, and I have strived to keep the BizSense Ning as spartan as possible and still fun.
So I added only two “Ning Apps”: Polldaddy poll creator and NewsShare, which is kind of like Digg.com, where members can post stories from around the web and vote them up and down.
Ning makes money by displaying ads on the right-hand side, which you can’t really do anything about, unless you pay for premium service. You can also pay for extra storage and other add-ons, but for the most part everything you need is free.
The one downside is that I could not for the life of me figure out how to search for other Nings. There is no search form that I could find, and I consider myself to be a pretty tech-savvy guy. This is the one major flaw I found and had to use Google to find other local Nings by putting in “richmond virginia ning.”
Only a handful popped up, including musicrva.ning.com, richmondpatriots.ning.com and hyperichmond.ning.com. So from what I can tell there aren’t too many businesses in Richmond jumping on the Ning bandwagon. My guess is that they get what they need from Twitter and Facebook.
I think Ning could be a good fit for area retail stores and restaurants. For one, it is a good way to go if you want to be fully in control and not have to receive invites, offers and other noise from other users. And it can be place for your regular customers to go and stay in the loop. It could also be really good for nonprofits.
But I understand if there isn’t room in your life for another social networking site, and Ning is easy to get started but seems like it might take some time to master. It is free, so I say it is worth a shot.
And to all the readers in the BizSense nation, feel free to join me on Ning to see what you think for yourself.
It’s lonely in a social network of one.
Al Harris is a BizSense reporter. Please send news tips to Al@richmondbizsense.com.
I think that final statement sums up my immediate reaction while reading the article – “It’s lonely ….” It seems to me that the power (and, admittedly, the frustration) of social networking is the fact that different people who are friends with each other are doing different things, sending invitations, posting info about news, business, or their favorite band, which generates interest among friends. I don’t think Ning sounds like a bad idea, I just have trouble thinking of it as a “social network.”
I could see using Ning to integrate into a company website (how might that be done?) to give it the Web 2.0-interactive-we-all-have-to-have-our-say potential that it might not already have. Not that I’ve tried it yet, so I really shouldn’t say much more ….
There used to be a search function for other networks on ning, and now it’s gone, and replaced by a hierarchical browsing tool. Wonder what possessed them to do that?