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Social Networking - Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Ning User Review Prior To Its $44M In The Bank

Ning, the social networking platform launched by Marc Andreesen now has 70K social networks running on the platform since it launched last October. That number includes our own ad:bree.

This number pales in comparison to the millions of blogs that have been launched on Blogger, WordPress and others, however, Ning sites are complete social networks and social networks are better than blogs.
As a consequence, Ning just gone yard with a $44M round of financing led by Legg Mason.

Before we learned of the latest round (Series C) we had written these review notes:
Ning is a hosted platform that includes: group blogs, forums, music, photos, and videos, as well as widgets. Ning has also just launched a new version that includes these new functions:

1) Groups
2) Music Player and Podcasts
3) Facebook Integration

Co-founder Gina Bianchini tells us that next up Ning will be adding:

1) A redesign of its widgets
2) Search improvements
3) Wiki pages
4) Feeds and new activity updates

Since it launched, Ning has gained competition from KickApps, People Aggregator, Elgg/Curverider, AroundMe, Wetpaint and Synthasite. WordPress and Movable Type are also adding social networking functionality. We have gotten our hands dirty with Ning for both a business network and a consumer network.

What Ning does right:
+ UI is spot on both for creators and users. You can get your hands on the code to customize or non-technical people can go far without touching code.
+ Ning support is top notch; the best we have dealt with recently.
+ Pricing is free, with premium items like your own domain and your own ads at what seems like fair rates.
+ New functionality coming at a fast clip.
+ There is good will and networking between Ning creators.

What Ning needs to fix
+ Ning acknowledges that their search is weak. Platforms like LinkedIn set a high bar that Ning falls short of.
+ Ning templates currently skew more towards consumer networks than business networks.
+ RSS feeds do not work for many sites.
+ Hosting has been unstable including some outage time today.
+ Analytics are week.

Controversy
We heard from one VC that they he would not recommend that his companies use Ning because they lose ownership over their members. Indeed Ning creates Ning IDs for users that are not email addresses and it doesn't use standards like OpenID. However, CEO Gina Bianchini responds that: "Ning does not claim any ownership rights in the Content or the Code you provide. You, as the Network Creator, own the Code you develop. You also own the Content you create and upload. After posting your Content or your Code, you continue to retain all ownership rights in such Content or Code, and you continue to have the right to use and license your Content and your Code in any way you choose."

Bottom line: Ning has been terrific if flawed before the $44M. We hope and expect the cash to lead to improvements.

Read - Marc Andreesen's blog
You can follow new releases on the Ning Blog

And you should definately read Jason Calacanis' take on the deal here.