Ning is a website that allows its members to create their social network and was founded by Marc Andreesen and Gina Bianchini. Development of this social website started in October 2004 and it was released to the public in October 2005.
Ning is headquartered in Palo Alto, California. The meaning of “Ning” in Chinese is peace and also a Chinese surname. Membership can be free or paid. Free membership users see ads and paid members have the option to control the display of ads. This social networking website claims that it has around 33 million registered members and 1 million social networks today. Members can join existing social networks or create their own.
Ning.com development:
Ning website is different from other social websites like MySpace, Facebook as it allows you to create your own networks. This website raised an amount of $44 million in venture capital led by Lagg Mason and also announced that it raised $60 million dollars from investors. The income for this website comes from online advertising on its site and also through paid membership.
It also allows customization to some level on how your social network looks. The member can change the CSS style.
In November 2008, this website partnered with Scripts4Ning to integrate developer products directly into Ning’s social networks.
Current usage:
Ning is currently used by its members to start their own social network. When a social network is created, it gets a URL of the type socialnetworkname.ning.com. The web address can be chosen when you are creating your social network.
Social networks hosted on this website can be joined by other members. The search function is provided to easily search the content of other members. Members can share and sell plugins to individual groups using this site. This website recently removed adult networks, the company just gave a month for existing members to move on.
Future developments:
Ning.com takes into account all aspects of the society to use their social networking site, from gamers to farmers, and offers a very good platform to share the society itself, they can upload photos and videos. It is also trying to be the best among all the social networking sites. So let’s hope ning.com rises to the top by offering some cool features in the future.
User benefits:
The great benefit of using Ning is that you can create your own community and allow other users to join the community all for free. Users can also send e-blasts to their community members instantly. Users can also have free and paid plans, in free plans also users can enjoy key benefits.
Technical explanation:
Users have the benefit of easy registration and once they have clicked the Create button they will be asked for their community name and their community address name. You will then be asked to enter all your details such as name, email, date of birth, and password. Once you have provided the details correctly, you will need to verify your email address.
We can customize the design of our page from a very easy to use interface. Next we can select a theme that we like from the available themes or customize our own theme. After setting everything up, it’s our turn to enter our home page. Here we can customize the page, invite friends, add comments and upload multimedia content.
