When I come across an interesting service I usually try to find other similar services and do a roundup. There are too many new startups being launched every day, and one of the purposes of this site is to sift through them and give the readers only the best. However, in the case of Ning, it’s pretty unique in its own space. It’s a meta-social network, which means it enables users to create their own social networks and community sites. In the simplest of terms, Ning attempts to be for MySpace (but not only MySpace, we’ll get to that) what Blogger is for blogs. This approach definitely has potential, but it need not always be successful: remember Crispynews, the site that offered the users a way to create their own Digg-like site, which recently closed its doors.

I’ve stumbled upon my first objection to Ning in the very first step of using it. I’ve registered under the user name franticindustries, but after I’ve tried to create my own social network under the same name, it wasn’t possible because the word “franticindustries” is already reserved as a user name. This is not good. If it must be like that, users should at least be warned. I cannot even delete this user in order to create a network under that name, which means that I’m screwed for good. This is not a huge problem, but it’s a problem I’d like to see fixed.

Instead of franticindustries, I’ve settled for a simpler name: frantic.ning.com (join it, it’s fun, it has a forum which I don’t feel like setting up on this site). Creating your own network is as simple as can be. Choose a name, tagline, description, a couple of tags and an image. Then, drag the features you want (photos, videos, text box, RSS, blog, forum) and arrange them in a simple visual tool which represents your future site. Choose the appearance, you can choose from a predefined layout, customize it or create a new one. Set up a couple more settings (public/private etc.), and the desired questions which will be given to the members that sign up for your new network, and you’re done. All this is done very well - it’s simple, and I don’t think it will confuse inexperienced users, while pros will be able to customize their site pretty thoroughly.

The features that I’ve chosen - blog, forum, photos - all work exactly as expected. Actually, it’s all so simple to set up and use that I’ve immediately created another Ning mini-community for private use with my friends, which is definitely a great use for this service. Ning v2 has been in development for over a year, and it shows - I haven’t found any bugs at all yet, which is a rare feat.

*update: while the building-your-site phase is polished quite well, the networking is still buggy, which I’ve discovered only after I’ve invited some friends to join my network. For a while, all the subsites were unavailable. Now, the invite feature doesn’t work - and I’ve tried both ways, e-mail and through Ning. So, there is still some ironing to do for Ning admins before the service really becomes useful.

Does Ning lack something? Sure. With an application like this, you can practically name countless features it could introduce, and I’m sure it will never manage to please everyone. One distant possibility that springs to mind is RSVC (read submit vote comment) Digg-like functionality, which many users will surely appreciate. But at this stage, Ning covers the basics (and then some) quite well. As I’ve said, it’s not only a competitor to MySpace - it’s also a free forum, or a free blog. You can use as much or as little of Ning as you’d like to. And Ning pulls all this off while not overwhelming the users with zillions of features. So, while it doesn’t have everything, but it’s OK, they can add more stuff as they go along.

Visually, you can set your site as you like, but even out of the box it stomps over MySpace’s legendary ugliness which has always kept me away from the most popular social network. I’ve used one of the predefined layouts and I hardly feel the need to change anything, which says a lot since I’m usually a customization fanatic.

If you wonder what’s Ning’s business model, it’s visible right away in the right hand sidebar - Google AdSense. It’s there on every new created site. The option to upgrade to an ad-free, paid account (on which you can run your own ads) is a logical business option for Ning, and it’s exactly what they’ve done. The price? $19.95 per month. Read more about it in the help or at Ning’s official blog. All I can say that for beginners the price point seems a little steep, but if you build a social network on Ning and it kicks off it would definitely be worth it to switch to a paid account.

Ning will make an impact. It’s a perfect solution for users to create small social networks for family and friends, sandbox and experiment with ideas that might one day become large social networks, or just have fun. In the crowded social network arena, it’s the logical step forward. It gives you a lot of free, well built online applications while keeping it all simple enough for everyone to use. The only thing that worries me is this quote from the help:

“We don’t offer a version of Ning that you can run on your own servers and it’s not on our roadmap. Sorry about that. If running your new social network on your own servers is important to you, drop us a line and we’ll give you some other options.”

It means that you’re dependant on them. It’s not an open platform. If you build a successful social network using Ning, you live and die with Ning. When I started this site last year, I’ve tried it out on Blogger first. Switching from Blogger to my own Wordpress powered blog with my hosting and domain was not exactly enjoyable, but it was still a 2-day affair. You can’t really do that with a social network: it would cost you thousands of dollars to recreate the same functionality independently from Ning. So, while I do like Ning and I think that it’s a great and useful service, I would like to see them change that roadmap a bit and add the possibility of using Ning as a platform on your own servers.