I just started with a company that is looking to transfer to ning.com. We are a non-profit org. with members, and I’d like to know if it is possible to send out e-mail blasts to its members through ning.

Thanks, and hope to hear from you soon.

If you have a problem it takes them over a day to get back to you via email– and the response is not often relevant.

There is no phone number to call– and it is there way or the highway.

This is what happens when you get an egotistical company with venture money– and young service people with an attitude.

Sorry ning– you suck.

Any ideas on how ning can do this?

Jake – I’m glad you like KickApps!

I also want to clarify a point raised by Gina in one of her comments. Our entire platform is available free of charge to users. We’re based on a pay-for-performance model where we share ad revenue from the incremental ad inventory that’s created from the use of KickApps’ social media platform–in other words, the cool new pages, etc., your community creates. If you want to serve your own ads or to have no ads at all, we simply ask for a fee based on cost per thousand page views in exchange. The better your community does, the better you do, the happier we all are.

The other important point is that with KickApps we allow you to easily integrate the full suite of social media experiences at an existing site.

Take care everyone,

Alex”

I have also found it interesting to see how people are using Ning and to read the comments here and see where people see flaws and others see opportunity. Where I see Ning as a opportunity is that has allowed me to quickly create apps, spend a little money on graphics and time on customizing and test a particular market. If it does not work I can remove the social network and move on to the next idea. The cost is significantly less then doing this all from scratch.

@Dave – the elgg.org looks very cool as well. I think this would be ideal for a person or business that has the technical capabilities to get it in place, host it, and maintain the updates, etc. While not for everyone – there will be many that find elgg useful – much in the way Drupal has done for CMS or Moodle has done for LMS. I can also see this being adapted in businesses for internal social networks. I think Ning addresses a different group of users that just want to get their apps working and leave all the heavy lifting to others.

In terms of so many social networks popping up. I personally compare that to the many niche areas that exist today in the magazine publishing where people have produced titles like Scuba, Surfing, WoodWorking, etc. Essentially Ning is allowing people to create niche social nets for topics
they are interested in and then build the community around that. One still has to do their own marketing and such, but this new Facebook feature now allows a person to go out and reach millions of potential users for a topic area.

Being a from a technical background – I find Ning amazing as it lets non-technical people do some really cool social networks that they could not otherwise create on their own. It also allows technical folks to do even more incredible social nets by digging deeper if they should choose to do such. I think @micheal kimsal said it best – Ning may not be for everyone and some may create throwaway networks, etc.

In terms of those complaining about owning the users – I don’t think anyone owns the user. I once thought I would like to control all my users – but then I realized how much work is involved in maintaining a user database, which is costly in terms of managing security, preventing spam, adapting the network(s) to handle any new laws that gov’t may invoke, etc. One thing I would like to see Ning support is OpenId.

There are still many things Ning lacks – but most likely because there is only so much a small team can do. From the small group they have (based on their corporate site descriptions) – I think they have done some incredible Agile development and not only keep pushing new releases of their product out, but keep pushing out some cutting edge features. I guess I would say that people need to remember Ning is a platform and a set of tools and like any tool it needs to be applied to the right situation and is not meant to solve every problem. It is niche – just like social apps people create for it become niche. But it does the job it is intended to do very well.

My last point is those questioning why Gina or other Ning folks are spending time on TC or even Ning Forums. In particular @Zach’s comment. I agree with @Michael K on this one too. If other CEO’s and employees would spend as much time as the Ning folks spend listening to their customers or even those complainers – then many companies might actually improve their product or platforms. Someone mentioned early Ning – which I too used and
posted some suggestions to their support and actually got a response. Likewise anytime I had a problem with a technical issue, someone from support was quick to get back to me or talk me through it via the IRC Ning group. I for one am glad to see a CEO and company team members ask for feedback provide insight to questions and even gracefully deal with the trolls out there.

- makes good sense /

To download a copy of the application source code on Ning just shoot an email to developer at ning… asking for a copy of the code, the license over the code is very similar to a LGPL and it is most php. And by default all social networks applications are open source, which means anyone can take a peak on how something was implemented (with the exception of the networks who paid for the premium service of closing the source code), I have some bookmarklets that might be useful to explore the code of existing Ning apps and social networks at http://goodmor....okmarklets.html

As for the download of your users data, you can either use the REST or PHP APIs for that, you have access to all information they provided to you plus some information that they provided to Ning for the NingID registration(the default authentication system), the exception is the email address, and if you also need that info from your users, it is simple to include this as part of your network’s “join” process with a copy of the code.

You are definitely not wrong about the lipstick pig in the case of myspace and facebook, but in the case of Ning, you are not necessarily gathering eyeballs to other company’s advertisers, you don’t need to expose your community to ads if you don’t want to, the text ads that are present on free networks can be removed or replaced with yours by purchasing a premium service at the cost of $20/month.

I think eventually facebook applications will be like the old days when everybody were buying cisco routers – before long, it was every other week news that somebody was getting them and nobody talked about it. But I like the idea of what Ning does, I think there is a market for it.

My goal is to spend the next few weeks with Ning so this conversation is very helpful.

I was going to work on Ning last month, but visited one of my sites on a Saturday night and found the site down with the big Ning logo telling me the site was down. I wish the network was more white label, and wonder why maintenance would be done during Saturday night prime time??? Turned me off a bit so I spent more time on my other sites.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Ning so far because it will allow me to do things I’ve always wanted to do. I’m not very technical so I’ve been waiting for hosted applications to be invented. My sites will become better without all of the tech responsibility falling on my shoulders.

I’ve seen amazing progress so far. Last year, the platform was too difficult for me to use and this year – so far – it is much more of what I have been looking for.

I really enjoy the Ning Network Creators site because other people like me get together and talk about what we need from Ning and share our experiences with each other. I also enjoy how Gina and the Ningineers participate so much.

One suggestion (here on TechCrunch) is to make sure all Ning employees disclose that they are Ning employees so we know which comments are coming from within the company.

As for the ability for users to share pics and vids on Facebook, I love it. I spend way too much money trying to market my sites so any type of feature that could lead to viral marketing is greatly appreciated.

I dont see Ning itself as a social portal like myspace orkut or facebook (although one social portal can be built on top of Ning’s platform), the second analogy comes closer (wordpress) Ning provides a framework/platform and hosting. As for niche developers, I would say that they have a pretty good control over their features and users (the full source is available to modify/adapt/extend ) and the entry-level cost is pretty reasonable (free) I think it all depends on the kind of ambition we are talking about, and Ning would not be the solution for everyone.

CCHits (cchits.org) is one example I can think of social application that could have been made using other resources, but given it was a one-(lazy)man’s job it would have never existed in the first place without the Ning platform… not everyone wants to build websites to sell it and have a Porshe, people still do this kind of stuff for (God forbid) fun

I remember the description of the Ning platform as a “playground” for developers in the early days, and I still think that this is in it’s identity, with the difference that now a more mature product (social network builder) coexists within this playground and it is not just for developers anymore.

Having the right level of Schizophrenia on an fast-changing world may pay more than to force up a “true identity”… just my 2 cents.

Why do you think someone posting here would be considered doing so in their ‘free time’? Perhaps part of her role is to deal firsthand with PR issues. With an audience and large and savvy as TechCrunch’s, spending a bit of time here reading people’s reactions to an article about her company strikes me as someone who’s devoted and passionate about their company. Wouldn’t it be nice if Mark Zuckerberg or Terry Semel would pop in now and then to get a good understanding of what people thought of their companies? Can someone handle every single blog/forum that way? Obviously not. But again, given the size/focus of TechCrunch, keeping up with postings about your company makes sense.

Don’t get me wrong; this doesn’t mean that it’s not a useful service for a specific type of user, but the hype seems unjustified to me.