| Ning is an online platform for users to create their
own social websites and social networks, launched in October 2005.
Ning was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and
Gina Bianchini. Ning is Andreessen's third startup (after
Netscape and Opsware), and gets much of its notability from
Andreessen's successes with those companies. Ning means "peace" in
Chinese, as explained by Gina Bianchini on the company
blog. Features Ning hopes to compete with large social sites like MySpace and Facebook, by appealing to users who want to create networks around specific interests or have limited technical skills. The unique feature of Ning is that anyone can create their own custom social network for a particular topic or need, catering to specific audiences. At its launch, Ning offered several simple base websites developed internally and by members of a closed beta. In late September of 2006, Ning narrowed its focus to offering a group website, a photos website, and a videos website for people to copy and use for any purpose. Later, these three templates were superseded by a single customizable template aimed at allowing non-developers to more easily customize their copy of the social website. However, Ning does allow developers to have some source level control of their social networks, enabling them to change features and underlying logic. Ning has announced support for the OpenSocial API that Google announced in late 2007. Developers will be able to run OpenSocial gadgets within their networks. The websites running on its service are built in standard PHP and the platform itself is built in Java. Business Model |
| Currently, Ning has two primary
business models. One allows users to create a network for free, in
exchange for the network hosting ads that Ning supplies. - This is
and will be our buisness model. The other, their "Ning for
Business" option, offers users a network where they control the ad
content (or lack thereof), in exchange for a monthly fee. According to TechCrunch, the uptake of Ning hasn't been as great as it could be. It requires a knowledge of web programming, lacks the scalability of an open API, and can only be hosted on Ning's servers. After hitting 100,000 social networks, TechCrunch revised its forecast and Ning has been called "fast-growing". Currently, Ning hosts more than 185,000 networks. (13 March 2008) Run ads on your social network We can opt to run our own ads, using any ad server, or remove the ads entirely and use the right column of your network. If we do run your own ads, all revenue generated goes directly to you. »Run ads on your social network« premium service for $19.95 per month. Domain Ning also allows us to map our own URL to our network. And if our network’s getting popular, we can purchase more storage and bandwidth instead of removing data. $4.95 per month per domain plus ~ 1.50 € per month to buy a domain with custom DNS services. Remove Ning Promotional Links We can also protect our social network by removing the “Create Your Own Social Network” button all visitors to your network see at the top of the page as well as the »About this network« box in the right column. This premium service is called »Remove Ning Promotional Links.« - $7.95 per month Get More Storage and Bandwidth One year ago I created this network on Ning and get automatically 10 GB of storage [content] and 100 GB of bandwidth [traffic] for our network. Is our social network getting popular? We can purchase more storage and bandwidth from Ning. It costs: 1 unit = 10 GB of storage and 100 GB of bandwidth - $9.95 per month per unit |
The Company The company started as a stealth startup named '24 Hour Laundry' with CEO Gina Bianchini and 14 employees. The name changed to Ning at launch in October 2005. Ning was initially funded internally by Andreessen and angel investors. In July, 2007, Ning raised $44 million USD in venture capital, led by Legg Mason. Ning is located in downtown Palo Alto, California. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, last modified 5th. May 2009 |
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