September 23, 2007

Ning Milestone: 100k Social Networks

Michael Arrington

45 comments »

Ning will cross a sizeable milestone this weekend: 100,000 user created social networks on the platform (including this one). That’s up from just 30,000 in February when they launched a new version of the service. The company is also saying that page views have been growing 40% month over month over the summer.

Ning recently raised a $44 million round of financing after two undisclosed rounds directly from co-founder Marc Andreessen. The company certainly finds itself in the right place at the right time. Everyone wants a social network of their own, and Ning is here to give them one.

The company sure has come a long way since I pronounced them dead in early 2006. Sometimes I like it when I’m wrong.

Update: Andreesseen has just posted about this as well, with a lot of additional forward looking details.

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Jimmy Huen

September 23rd, 2007 at 2:28 am

I am sorry but 90% of those user created social networks are just curiosity creations and shells. They won’t last more than a few months. After the pool of fools get dried up, where will Ning’s growth be?

If everyone and their grandma runs a social network, they are as they say in finance, cannibalizing each other.
RBA

September 23rd, 2007 at 2:33 am

Hmm, well, in that earlier post you highlighted what you believed to be Ning’s problems, and today many of them have been addressed. Sometimes when you pronounce the death of a company, you might actually be helping them.
JoeTech.com

September 23rd, 2007 at 2:37 am

Even if you only count, 10%, 10k user created social networks is still not bad at all.
Wayne Smallman

September 23rd, 2007 at 2:38 am

“I am sorry but 90% of those user created social networks are just curiosity creations and shells. They won’t last more than a few months.”

Exactly.

On top of which, we’re quickly approaching a point where people are becoming quite apathetic & indifferent towards Social Networks, no matter what smarts they bring along with them…
Jimmy Huen

September 23rd, 2007 at 2:41 am

By the way Michael, I’ve tried to get in contact with you about a domain that I would like to use and would like to run it by you. I think you might be interested in giving me your opinion on this as it is related to one of your favorite terms.

I submitted it through the contact form here and the forum, but have not heard back from anyone. Please email me contact info so that I can send you the name of the referenced domain.

Thanks.
RBA

September 23rd, 2007 at 2:45 am

Jimmy/Wayne, of course many of these sites/networks will be just test sites. That’s not uncommon. ANd that’s why it’s always more realistic to talk about “active” numbers, not total numbers, but it traffic is up, then it’s up, no questions there.

I think that what Ning and others are doing is the same thing Yahoo Groups has been doing for years, but tailored to the way many people use the net today. From that point of view, everyone and their grandma can run a social network and be just fine, trust me. Ning and simlar services are not meant to build the next MySpace.

In fact, Yahoo should probably transform Y!Groups into a fully functional service where people can create their own social networks, with or without email groups. In fact, I don’t know why they haven’t done it already.
tick-tack-counter

September 23rd, 2007 at 3:03 am

#1 - you are dead-right. I came across Ning a few months ago on a forum post here. Looked cool, so I created my little thingy there. Then I came back later, but could not remember what the login/address/password was, so I created one more. Then I showed it to someone else (they didn’t like it) and created a 3d one. It makes it only 99,997 networks, right?
lawrence

September 23rd, 2007 at 3:09 am

it’s not really a ’social network’, per se;
it’s more like a somewhat different, advanced myspace page

and besides, social networks were not designed to be highly fragmented - only a select few are meant to exist.

the power is in its people - and if there are only a few, as a result of this high fragmentation - it’s purpose has been defeated
tim

September 23rd, 2007 at 3:44 am

none of these ‘networks’ has more than a couple hundred users
anon

September 23rd, 2007 at 4:03 am

$44 million in VC = 100,000 users
WTF???
Dr. Jones

September 23rd, 2007 at 4:50 am

# 10 - And that was round C.
rc

September 23rd, 2007 at 5:56 am

nice article
only a select few can make it

rc

trading tennis blog
Michael Bailey

September 23rd, 2007 at 6:29 am

Well, let’s hope that they don’t blow through $44 million like PodShow has blown through $23 million, without much to show for it.

I’d like to sign up for the VC list, where do I start?
Mario Hemsley

September 23rd, 2007 at 7:06 am

I like Ning and hope they continue successfully. I like them so much in fact, that we have created seventy (70) companion sites for our NeoUrban Internet Network. Out of the box, they have the best look, the best widgets and functions, and are the easiest to setup. Good luck Ning, I am planning approximately another one hundred pages!!
Rich White

September 23rd, 2007 at 7:40 am

Ning is a fantastic service ! It has really allowed us to “socialize” our web presence quick and cheap !
Andrew

September 23rd, 2007 at 8:29 am

sorry but I made 5 networks and never used so I assume the numbers are much much lower.
Hustled by NING

September 23rd, 2007 at 8:36 am

I Can testify from our a personnal experience where our company used Ning to setup a Social Network to be promoted in a country.

We spent significant effort and ressources just to discover at the end:

1- Social networks created on the previous versions of Ning are not upgradable to the new version ( which was our case)

2- The users who register into you social network are actually registering into Ning. There is no way to retrieve their email address. So we discovered that essentially all the work we did was just promoting the Ning platform and we had no way of moving our users to another platform if we wanted to.

At the end, we discovered that we had spent several months of work FOR NOTHING
Great Platform

September 23rd, 2007 at 9:07 am

I set up ning supported social network (www.brooklinehigh.org) for my 20th high school reunion in April and within a month 150 people signed up from our class. The site was such a hit that other classes asked if they could join, so I opened up the site to all alums at the end of august. In the last 3 weeks the site has grown to 400 + and is now growing at 20-30 people per day. This is all word of mouth.

I would say that 25% of the people joining have used MySpace, etc, but for the other 75% of these users - this is the first time they have joined a social network. For many older users, myspace and other global social networks make them nervous and are too big to comprehend. But, they are willing to join a niche network/s that are targeted at their specific interests. This is where ning will thrive. Lots of targeted social networks that are more intimate than the the massive networks.

As a result of being exposed to the ning platform from the reunion website, I know of 20 people who have emailed me to tell me that they liked it so much that they or their spouses have set up other networks for other reunions, bands, etc, etc. The great thing is that for individuals, groups, and companies that don’t have the technical staff, ning is constantly upgrading the system with new applications, plug ins, etc. They are also very open to user feedback.

Yes it is true that some of the 100,000 networks on ning may not be active (i set up 4 accounts but only 1 is active), but my guess is that this is typical with most new companies. I tested twitter, etc, etc and over time after testing them and burning out on them have let those accounts sit there.

My guess is that some hungry entrepreneur in China will use ning as the platform for a 1000 localized / targeted networks and will do quite well.

Ning will thrive.

Keith
GeraldZ

September 23rd, 2007 at 10:39 am

I set up a network but I have no motivation to promote and grow it. I do all of the work and they collect the ad revenue? What a crock. I suggested that they work up a revenue-sharing scheme but got no response. That would be a win-win situation.
rick

September 23rd, 2007 at 11:02 am

@13, marc andreesen seems to be acutely cognizant of the need to keep an appropriate burn rate, I wouldn’t bet against him
Chris R.

September 23rd, 2007 at 11:03 am

I don’t think 100k users or even groups can be considered a milestone anymore. Too many social networks have hit 100k now for it to be used as a metric. We’re in 2007, not 2003, and I think 1M is a bare minimum now on groups and users. BeerCo has sites with 100k, and it’s no big deal anymore. Nobody cares about 100k, it’s not enough.
Ira

September 23rd, 2007 at 11:09 am

Instead of creating a group like on Myspace on Facebook, you create a “network” on Ning. I’m curious to see how many users they have rather than how many groups have been created. I don’t see Ning lasting once the social networking hype dies down, good for them for landing 44 million in funding though.
Chris R.

September 23rd, 2007 at 11:17 am

I agree with you Ira, except groups ARE networks. They are the same. It’s the same exact features as a group on myspace. It’s just called something else, and it’s less integrated with the rest of the website.

I was one of the first to jump on the bandwagon of Social networking when it got really popular, and I have to say, I see it starting to taper off. I see lots of new startups in California going after Google’s search. We are investing in that. We investing in Social networking back in the summer of 2005 and haven’t since. It’s getting too watered out and it’s too common now.
JoeTech.com

September 23rd, 2007 at 11:41 am

A couple people mentioned the number of users. 100k users for a social network is not a milestone. However, I think what a couple people missed here is that Ning has 100k user-created social networks. If there’s an average of 10 users per network, then it’s more like 1 million users. Honestly, I’m playing devil’s advocate here, and I don’t know the numbers on actual users.
moham polik

September 23rd, 2007 at 11:43 am

this post probably say “thank you mr. andressn for crunch40″ so I make post with no sustainable fact.

Mike give high number 100k but no backup - just 100k - how many are active as Jimmy #1 say? No give that cuz this is thank you post.
Chris R.

September 23rd, 2007 at 12:05 pm

JoeTech,

http://www.ning.com/account/signup.html

The signup is shared, the users seem to be shared amongst the groups, ala livejournal and myspace. There seems to be a logical separation of groups from the rest of the site, where they pulled a wordpress, with an apache virtual domain module that lets users point their domain at the server. We did that with subdomains actually, and so does livejournal.

Instead of setting up virtual domains in httpd.conf, the C module just takes the apache request and matches it to a database, then sends it to a php page accordingly. Just like apache mod-redirect. It took 5 minutes to code ours with an apache 2 C module template.

All this to say that users are shared between groups or networks. I wouldn’t believe the user count if they released it. I would want to exec the SQL count(userid) statement on the DB myself before I believe it.
Chris R.

September 23rd, 2007 at 12:07 pm

And I would want to filter out double IPs on those users as well before accepting the final count as real.
jaosn

September 23rd, 2007 at 12:37 pm

The facebook model is the right one to use compared to Ning’s. Let’s say we are talking about the high school prom vs the kids playground here.
What's Hot Today.com

September 23rd, 2007 at 1:25 pm

Amazing amount of growth in such a short period of time.
Buster

September 23rd, 2007 at 1:32 pm

Chris R, the post says “100,000 user created social networks” it doesn’t say “100,000 users.” If you’re going to spam your low rent developer and consulting services all over techcrunch, you might try taking a reading comprehension course first so that you don’t end up doing negative marketing
Michael

September 23rd, 2007 at 1:36 pm

Here is my version of a ning type of site. Its called kweedo.com and allows people to create a simple social networking site with all the features they come to expect. Never launched it though.

Michael
cweeb

September 23rd, 2007 at 2:38 pm

90%, I bet the number of dormant test wtf networks is more like 99%
trikepilot

September 23rd, 2007 at 3:19 pm

I for one have found Ning to be pretty close to “perfect” for what I wanted it to be. A very quick and easy way to get scalable services and formatting of a social website without have to do the following:
1) Build my own from scratch using PHP, Javascript, HTML, and CGI;
2) Monitoring the typical “spam parade” that follows whenever I use a plug-in service such as PHP-forums, or similar (which have a zillion spam bots that get to them without effort);
3) Risking any capital on a shared or dedicated server; and
4) Setting up a domain and DNS pointing for new ideas before they’ve been established.

In other words, YES, it is true that you must give up something to accept using Ning (email registration of users, pay for your adsense placements and domain pointing), BUT, they have unbelievably responsive Tech support, great backup and interface options, and allow one to be up and running the content/advertising in no time, so that effort can be spent on monetizing or building the user base instead of programming or doing back-end work on the server.

My test-site was http://www.social.trikepilot.com and we were able to get almost 50,000 unique views and almost 5000 unique viewers (160+ registered members plus lurkers I guess) in only seven weeks. This was remarkable for us given that our site is a niche about a wild hobby of flying Ultralight and Microlight Aircraft (motorcycles with wings!). Our members are able to post all their video and photos and blogs and stories in a jiffy without any knowledge of programming (they are almost universally newbies). We’re now hosting a couple hundred videos and nearly a grand of photos, with zero effort on the back-end chores.

Gina and Phil seem to be on top of this thing like foxes on a hen-house, and every time I’ve had any issue they were personally in touch within an hour or less. Ridiculously great service for a startup, let alone a largely funded company? I’ve never had the CEO of any service or plugin I’ve used in the last 15 years email me personally answering tech questions before??

Anyway, take your own view… but they are not all things to all people, just really good at doing one specific set of things for a specific set of people. I was able to seamlessly blend my Ning network into my original domain site as well, which was icing on the cake.
phenom

September 23rd, 2007 at 4:49 pm

Looking for web masters to work on a brilliant new idea using Web 2.0 technologies. If interested contact me @ {{phenom {dot} bade {@} gmail {dot} com }}.
Chris R.

September 23rd, 2007 at 6:02 pm

“Chris R, the post says “100,000 user created social networks” it doesn’t say “100,000 users.” If you’re going to spam your low rent developer and consulting services all over techcrunch”

How dare you??? Well I’ll be….
I read it just fine. It said they have 100k groups. They let people start groups under their own domain and have it resolve to their IP via an apache module. Ning/HTTP server is either Apache or Lighttpd with a name hack and , period. Exerpt from what the apache C module probably looks like:

static int mod_ning-a-like_method_handler (request_rec *req)
{
r = req;
if (strcmp(”mycustomdomain.com”, &r->filename[strlen(r->filename)-strlen("mycustomdomain.com")])) {
# oh noes, we redirect to our “custom Social network script” for mycustomdomain.com
}

Then they just tell people to point their domain to their server via godaddy.
It’s that easy. I could do the same thing with sitespaces.net and allow our 108,000 members to all create their own instance of the website. But of course I would have to cripple it down to group features only to compete with Ning.

And yes, our developers are low rent. And I’ll stop telling people about them the day people stop taking us up on the offer. Until that day, I will keep on keeping on.
BTW: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8606487@N03/
Google here we come.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20823046/
Google here they come.
There’s a new gold rush online and you have to go high or stay home. The level of entry should keep the people that messed up the social networking boom at home this time.
And come on 5 years later is a little too late, even for bandwagoning. We were only 2 and just got the ripples of the wave.
Andy

September 23rd, 2007 at 7:09 pm

It is nothing but a passing fad. The masses are entranced by Andreesen and he manages to cash out early (in the case of Ning, he has already more than cashed out his investment). Why does it take over 40 million to create a web based app like Ning?

It will ultimately be sold to some sucker, much like Opsware was sold to HP, when they their Server Automation product was losing customers and it’s revenue share was on the decline.

Who is the sucker this time? Yahoo? …?
Hashim Warren

September 23rd, 2007 at 7:53 pm

If Techcrunch readers actually clicked through to the blog Arrignton is referencing they would see that page further referencing a blog post from Ning that explains the significance of the 100,000 networks, including the dead ones.
Fails To Mention

September 23rd, 2007 at 9:47 pm

PMarca’s blog post doesn’t include 7-day or 30-day active numbers. That’s the real stat that matters, imho.
Ronaldo

September 23rd, 2007 at 10:38 pm

Ning will die a humiliating death I reckon; if it’s not niche it’s doomed.
Simon

September 23rd, 2007 at 11:10 pm

What most of you guys don’t understand is that Ning’s social networks can be used for far more than the traditional applications of social networking. I performed a recruitment experiment using Ning recently.

I’m not exagerating, within one month I went from ‘concept’ to a lucrative video advertising startup and I could not have done this with out Ning. Ning allowed me to circumvent the bullshit around dealing with VCs and launch a company. I have over 1,100 members now working for me and that list is growing day over day. I was very selective about who could join and I’ve banned hundreds who aren’t qualified. I’m now bidding on seven figure advertising deals, in short, I’m 100% kicking ass thanks to Ning. They’re product and service is outstanding. To all you nay sayers I say, dissing Ning is utterly dumb. It’s free and highly effective. If you factor it in creatively you can achieve miracles.
Mark

September 23rd, 2007 at 11:45 pm

Thinking of all those thousands of Ning social networks makes me wonder what would happen if I joined all of the Ning networks devoted to blogging.
Lately, I have been wondering if it’s possible for me to develop my own social network, sort of like Ning did. Imagine the TRAFFIC! Imagine the magnitude of the COMMUNICATIONS CHANNEL you would have!
Chris R.

September 24th, 2007 at 4:33 am

Mark, we can develop you a site just like Ning based on our own social networking platform, where each user gets an instance of the entire website and can point their domain at the IP for use as a virtual host, and we can do it with a single developer at $3999 per month for 12 months. I will try to email you as well.

This offer is extended to anyone reading through. It’s $3999 per month plus 5k for the cost of licensing our social networking platform.
Abby Shaw

September 24th, 2007 at 1:29 pm

There’s a lot of high priesthood type arrogance here. Is this the group that knows how to drive business success for a web platform? Aren’t you all still quarreling over the definition of Web 2.0? Let’s look at Ning as a business rather than a technology play: easy-to-use, not overwhelming, provides control and a soft rampup for novices, provides sophisticated features for those who want them. So it’s not the cutting part of the edge, big wooo — that’s a gadget to add in a few months. It’s well designed, clean, high usability right out of the box, whether you make a crazy busy or a simple — what? site? community? thing? group? area? I don’t think the thing you create has a name yet. There’s lots of business application for the small scale group, as long as it’s easy to use, and FREE.

Take off the priest robes, guys.

In this nit-picking, you’re forgetting the salutory lesson of the iPod/iTunes nexus — it’s not the technology, it’s the ease-of-use for the majority of users.
chris w

October 4th, 2007 at 4:09 am

Really interesting discussion everyone !! I am in the ” it’s easy so I like it” camp at the moment but it’s very valuable to have some of the views expressed here.Thanks.