Ning Social Platform

Brain Trust: Ning chairman Marc Andreessen (he built Netscape back in the day), with Bianchini, at the company's HQ in Palo Alto. | photgraph by Art Streiber

They make an exquisitely odd pair: he the gangly 6-foot-4-inch former coder with the huge egg-shaped head, famous for having posed barefoot -- on a throne -- for the cover of Time; she the petite, charismatic woman from working-class roots anointed a "Web 2.0 Hottie" by Valleywag (a fact she concedes only reluctantly). He's the grand visionary, the company chairman whose speech unfurls in sheets of sound; she's the effervescent CEO, a social networker at heart who prefers roaming Ning's hallways to the isolation of working at home. He once won Customer of the Year at Hobee's, a local restaurant chain, for eating there every day for a year; she waitressed at one in high school.

They both use the same expression to describe Ning's business model: "incorporating virality into the functionality of the product." In English, that means Ning grows because each new user begets more users. Every time someone sets up a social network, he has no choice but to invite friends, family, colleagues, and like-minded strangers to sign on as well. The company calculates that each person signed up for a Ning group is worth, on average, 2 people, compounded daily: On day two, that individual brings in 4 group members and on day three, 8; within a week, she has brought in 128 people. Which is how Ning has been able to grow at a daily average of more than .4% and add 500 new groups a day, doubling roughly every 137 days. "It's the power of compounding, predictable growth rates," Bianchini says.

In the early days, not everyone knew what to make of Ning. The company spent three years building out the site's underlying platform; a year into that process, it released a couple dozen social applications in order to begin testing and refining what they had made. Those applications, which Bianchini readily admits were "very simple," led Michael Arrington to post an entry on his TechCrunch blog entitled "Ning RIP?": "The reality of Ning is that it has lost whatever coolness it had, no one uses it, and Ning is going to have a very hard time getting people's attention." But Arrington did an about-face 18 months later, after the company attracted 100,000 online groups in about six months and some $44 million in capital, mostly from Legg Mason and T. Rowe Price. "Everyone wants a social network of their own, and Ning is here to give them one," Arrington wrote. "The company sure has come a long way since I pronounced it dead in early 2006. Sometimes I like it when I'm wrong."

You might wonder how something as profound, powerful, and potentially profitable as a viral loop has remained under the radar for so long. Andrew Chen, a blogger and former advertising executive who worked with MySpace, Hi5, and other social sites, has a simple answer: This critical insight "is worth a lot of money," and the few people who understand it "are all doing their own companies."

No accident that venture funds are gravitating to companies with a viral loop baked into their business plans -- inspired, no doubt, by the success of Peter Thiel, whose $500,000 investment in Facebook is now worth roughly $750 million on paper. Andreessen himself has seeded 10 of them, including Digg. Sequoia Capital's Roelof Botha, an early YouTube backer, actively pursues viral-loop companies. And Fred Wilson, managing partner at Union Square Ventures, jokes that he's considered changing his firm's name to "Viral Ventures," since almost two-thirds of the $20 million his firm invested last year went to viral- loop companies such as Twitter.

Chen calls a viral loop the "most advanced direct-marketing strategy being developed in the world right now." And make no mistake: Viral expansion loops are about marketing, just not in the traditional sense. "Nothing can be truly viral unless it is good," Wilson allows. "You can create a crappy application, build viral hooks in it, but if it's bad, then nobody will follow the viral channel, and the company will go out of business." But if you create something people really want, need, or merely enjoy, then your customers will grow your business for you. Users, just by using a product, are, in essence, offering a testimonial. "When your currency is ideas, people become emotionally attached," Ning's Bianchini says. "Then you become a public utility like Blogger, YouTube, or Facebook."

One former ad exec calls viral loops the "most advanced direct-marketing strategy being developed in the world right now."

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Social network sites like MySpace and Facebook started a desire from the public for more socialness on the internet. MySpace and Facebook aren't the only social networks out there. Ning is an online platform for users to create their own social websites and social networks. It hopes to compete with other social networks like MySpace and Facebook. 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.



Ning offers a single customizable template aimed at allowing non-developers to more easily customize their copy of the social website. Ning does allow developers to have some source level control of their social networks, enabling them to change features and underlying logic.

Getting Set Up With Ning

Getting set up with Ning is simple. Just visit www.Ning.com and click on the "Get a Ning ID" tab to get started. Once you have an account set up they provide a number of tutorials and references to help out with customization and configuration.



Another alternative is to find a freelancer. When looking for freelancers make sure you get someone with experience in what you're looking for and can provide working, published examples at the aforementioned places. I really recommend a freelancer, especially If you are really looking at a professional site that you can use for marketing and promotion. I got my site set up but it's wonderful all of the sites that are available by using Ning.

Ning sites are hosted with Ning, which results in a www.YourSite.ning.com url, but they also offer a url masking feature for $5.00 that will eliminate the .ning from the url (result: www.YourSite.com). You can also add features like blogs, video, audio and almost anything else you want including mini-forums, you now have a social networking powerhouse at your fingertips.

Will Ning Compete?

According to Ning CEO, Gina Bianchini: "Nearly 30,000 applications have been created to date, up from less than 5,000 a year ago. Page views have been spiking, reaching 20 million per month, 20x traffic a year ago. Unique visitors have reached nearly 5 million per month as well, 10x a year ago."

View my page on Ning Directory - Directory of Ning Networks Promoting Ning Sites




The Directory is a place where your primary goal is to advertise, market, and represent your Social Community. So, make it look great; make it sound great! Get your page ready for Community Seekers to find. Let them know what your Network is all about. The Directory will become an excellent hub where potential Social Network Members can search for, and find, GREAT Social Communities like yours! It takes very little of your time, and that's only needed to set-up your page. You do not have to be an active member for this to be successful - - for all of us. But, of course you could make some great contacts if you are. Just set-up your page to look like your Network. Advertise your community to the MAX, it won't be considered spam. Tip: Make your member name and member icon represent your Network. Although we are small yet, I'm amazed at the domino effect, and at how many awesome contacts I've already made on: The Directory of Ning Networks!

Directory of Ning Networks, Matching Ning Networks with Social Community Members. An easy way to find and join Ning Networks.

Please invite your non white-label Network Creator friends to join too! Non-white label, as in: Networks who are not paying premium services to keep Ning transparent to their members. In my case, I have both Ning branded and non-Ning branded. You may have the same situation. The more you invite, the better! If you invite the most, who consequently join, you will earn the menu spot as our VIP Member and Community. There will also be a submenu link to your Community. The VIP spot is selected every 2-3 weeks, depending on invitations.

View my page on

1. Run your own ads (Adsense, etc). However, in order to do this, you need to pay a premium service of $19.95/month
2. Charge membership fees. If you have a highly specialised topic in mind, and you have several useful content and services that you can offer via your social networking site, then you might be able to charge membership fees.
3. Affiliate links. If you have products that you wish to promote to your highly targeted network, then adding content with affiliate links might be useful.
4. Selling your own products/services. Again, like affiliate linking, selling your own products/services might be acceptable to your members if you have something good to offer.
5. Selling direct advertising. If you have the all-clear to sell direct advertising, then this can be another source of income for your social network.

About Me


Desiree Richardson
I am a 39 year old married military nurse and mother of three wonderful children. I have been a nurse for 10 years and I am really loving my online business and traffic generation. My goal is to retire in 3 1/2 years from the military. I want to do PTA and other great stuff with my son who is currently 5. I want my online business to be in the six figure income range. I will never put all my eggs in one basket and I encourage multiple streams of income. My Alexa rating on this site is 228,333 and my Page Rank is 3. I will continue to market and grow the network. Come back often because I will add more features. I would love to get feedback from members so send me a message on the site.

An entrepreneur is a person who has possession of an enterprise, or venture, and assumes significant accountability for the inherent risks and the outcome. It is an ambitious leader who combines land, labor, and capital to often create and market new goods or services. ... The term is a loanword from French and was first defined by the Irish economist Richard Cantillon. Entrepreneur in English is a term applied to the type of personality who is willing to take upon herself or himself a new venture or enterprise and accepts full responsibility for the outcome. Jean-Baptiste Say, a French economist, believed to have coined the word Entrepreneur first in about at 1800. He said an entrepreneur is "one who undertakes an enterprise, especially a contractor, acting as intermediatory between capital and labour".

Rich and Rich Entrepreneurs strives to help and promote all entrepreneurs. We want everyone to gain something that they can use for years to come in their internet marketing. We will always endeavor to bring you programs that will have a co-op value. The co-op value comes in the knowledge that this network will be marketed and will provide value to active members. I try to keep as much on the front page as possible so that members are simultaneously promoted with my marketing efforts.

My marketing and traffic generation techniques will be a benefit to those that form and promote their groups. Forum discussion and blogs will get noticed with consistent marketing. This is a professional business network and if you find something that is not, please send me a message. We will not tolerate promotion of porn,gambling,or sexual suggestion of any type on the network. I really want to hear from my members. Please let me know how I can make this social network better with traffic or other internet marketing techniques.

Co-op advertising The advantages of coop advertising include: # You can use the coop money to either reduce the cost of your advertising or to extend the amount of advertising you can employ for the promotion of your business. # You can use the coop money to improve the quality or design of your advertising - for example, full-color ads or inserts in your local newspaper. # You can extend your reach and advertise in mediums that you may never have considered previously, such as telephone directories or television ads.

Running your own home based business is just one of many ways to make money. It is the same as owning your own traditional business and should be treated as such. You will need to advertise your business, sell and promote any products and get others to join your team. It takes allot of hard work, not to mention time and dedication. However, the potential for success is great and can be very rewarding.

Before starting a home based business you need to figure out what is real and what is a scam. You must do your homework. The Internet is great for researching anything, including getting the facts about any business opportunity.

Information

Earn money by looking at Internet ads for FREE... no selling either! I think everyone should get on this A.S.A.P..... especially if you have Facebook, Twitter, etc! It can't hurt to try-it costs nothing and is very 21st century!

Website: http://5205.powerbarclub.com Members: 1 Latest Activity: Join The Group Here

Social networking websites are basically online communities. They give users an easy and pretty safe way to come together. Most social networking websites are designed specially to make it easier for you to search for and make contact with other Internet users, especially those users that you actually have something in common with. Examples of social networking sites are

• MySpace - this is the most well known and popular social networking site.


• Orkut - this is Google's version of social networking


• Yahoo 360 - Yahoo's version of social networkin, linked to Yahoo IDs.


• Squidoo - allows people to build their own "Lens" with information on whatever subject they are interested in.