Ning has done a great job in balancing the right social networking features for people interested in creating social networks online. The Ning.com website allows users to create their own social networks for anything and set public or private permissions on each specific network.
Creating a Ning account take about 5 minutes and you'll be able to quickly join a Ning network in that time also. Since you setup a unique profile for each Ning community you can share the right amount of information with each specific network you join.
Your master Ning username and password allow you to use a single Ning ID across each of your groups. Avatars are specific to each network and you can set you communication preferences for email updates based on the interactions you join online.
Since Ning.com also offers premium services, you can upgrade your Ning account to control the advertising, file size space and URL. Ning allows for strong branding control as well as css upload. Bandwith is defined as 100MB and 10GB of storage which is the 1 unit equivalent for the $9.95/month upgrade. With a very popular Ning network and with the consideration of video, it would seem that you'd run out of space pretty quickly under the free model.
Ning social networks enable members to upload photos, videos, and create blogs. Other members of the specific Ning community are able to see the latest updates from the communities main page or go specifically to a media section of the community.
Groups allow for strong organization of special interests within each community. Groups allow for further segmentation and user focus thus segmenting a entire network into many other niche categories.
Friend capabilities ensure that for each social network, a user may publish or share within the entire community "Everyone," or limit viewing of content and media to Friends or even just you.
While event and calendaring functions do not seem to be present at this time it's likely that either a third party widget or configuration would allow for utilization of community specific event promotion.
Overall the Ning social networking platform is one of our top picks to watch for this year. The business model is simple to understand for most users and the ability to support community and media is quite impressive.
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Social Networking - CollectiveX Social Groups, Discussions, and Calendar
See Also:
Have a Question about Social Platforms? - Social Platforms Discussion
