Flux, a new social network joint venture between Viacom and SocialProject, had a limited launch in September.
The platform is the cornerstone of Viacom’s social network strategy. Instead of building independent networks for MTV and its hundreds of other brands, they’ve built a distributed platform that shares users, infrastructure and content, but allows for distinct branding and community building around each property. And Flux isn’t just for Viacom - third parties are using it as well.
When Flux launched it had only a few hand picked non-Viacom partners. Today they are opening up the platform for anyone that wants to join.
Like Ning, it’s fairly easy to create a Flux social network. The look and feel can be customized via templates or by uploading your own CSS, and the network can be mapped to your domain name.
Once created any Flux member can join your network with a single click. Since Flux is already gaining users via their launched Viacom and other properties, this gives young communities a deeper pool of users to draw from. And the fact that new users do not need to create a new profile, friends list or login credentials gives them a greater incentive to join. User data is exportable, Flux says, if the partner creates a privacy policy stating that.
Partners have three integration choices. fShare, the basic integration, allows users to take content from the site and easily embed it into other social networks. Flux Lite allows partners to create a basic social network. Flux custom gives nearly full control over the look and feel and has additional features. Partners can choose any integration, it just takes a little more work to use the custom features. Flux will add new developer features over time as well. The chart to the right (click for larger view) shows the various options.
We’ve created a test social network on Flux, at techcrunch.flux.com. And we’re also integrating their fshare functionality into the main TechCrunch site as an illustration of how it works - see the button below each post.
Flux partners can choose to show Flux ads on the site, or use their own. Flux says they are currently selling at a $1.50 CPM and will split that 50/50 with partners. If a partner chooses to display their own ads instead, they must split revenue with Flux 50/50 as well.
Flux v. Ning
Flux and Ning have very similar features and will compete for communities looking to build a social network (and there are lots of other choices as well). Ning has an established platform, lots of money, and 130,000 existing communities (including Playboy). Flux also has a great platform, and the leverage of all the Viacom properties to promote it.
Ning sees the threat from Flux. CEO Gina Bianchini wrote a fiery point-by-point comparison of the two services earlier this week - Flux disputes some of the facts.
Ning is currently supporting Google’s Open Social platform. Flux says they will fully support Open Social beginning in January.
Does flux pay for the fshare button/usage or only for the social network in regards to the $1.50 you quote above?
The coolest part about Ning is how you can write your own applications to the Ning platform and data store. Until you can do that on Flux, they will stay in second place.
DAY LATE (to be precise, two years late), DOLLAR SHORT (at the minimum)
“social” has become a burnout term in the valley, a dead-end for funders, and not even on the radar for flyover country.
just go work at a soup kitchen people
I’m gonna check it out because everytime I’m on NING it crashes.
Content within Ning communities cannot be shared outside of that community like you can of Flux.
This is the first inning of web Social Networks and only the first batters have taken a swung. There’s more to come.
Flux looks good, but Ning is tough to beat (I have not had stability problems with it like Angela). Ning has a pretty solid head start though…
How many social network sites are going to appear in the next weeks??
someone needs to write a program that can upload all info to each new social networking site.
i’m sick of joining and filling out all the forms.
angela you bored today or just trying to drive traffic to your site?
Here’s how I see it….
Flux.com -
better content library
possibly better exposure through their network and content sharing initiatives
Ning.com
more flexible (code is available for free to customize)
better from revenue perspective (no 50/50 share)
Your group is so creative. Wonderful idea!
Boring, gimme more!
@Sean-Michael #5
That is not true, public content on Ning can easily be shared outside of the Ning platform, be it through the embeddables or using the REST Atom API.
And cross-network content sharing between networks on Ning is also possible using the php api…
correct me if i’m wrong but flux used to be tagworld.com which basically the same look of myspace ,so i guess when competition is so stiffed in social networking they changed their strategy and make flux as a community tools for social networking. The website(flux) look promising to monetize than tagworld.
Nat
http://www.workersinc.com
Nice flashing ads
blech.
Take that Gina!
Andrew: not for long. The way it seems, Flux is lot more mobile. Once wince, they come up with another beating feature.. So just you wait. Way to go, Flux!
I spent 60 seconds looking at Flux. It seems like having a distributed social network is a great idea. Creating a profile on one node creates a profile on all Flux nodes under every domain. I could have misread the poor communication of what the value is, but that was my quick take-away?
I agree with the comments about social networking burnout, but I advise bands to consider dumping MySpace for something they can have more control over. Flux - if it works as I imagine it does - would be great for the music industry; as every fan loves multiple bands, and nobody wants to create a SN profile for every freaking band in their iPod.
I going to wait until Flux puts more useful information, FAQs and some clearer presentation material on their site before I give it a try. Dear Flux, don’t make me sign up unless you can show me exactly how it works (technically). I want to see the video and some setup screen shots. Thanks.
Its great how you can customize so much on Flux.
They let you do things like get error messages when you try to start a new discussion thread, they have poor templates with bad link color to background color contrast, they insert random background-images on buttons here and there, and they let you register network names like http://admin.flux.com!
You’d think they would release with something solid instead of something that hardly resembles an alpha-quality build.
OMG, will ning be able to compete?
I may blog about this tomorrow. I may.
Niche social networks have experienced huge growth this year and this field will continue to grow in 2008. Companies and brands will build their own social networks to engage and market to interested parties.
We’ve recently launched a search engine that helps users find niche interest social networks and helps social network owners promote them.
Users search for sites related to whatever their interest is and webmasters submit their sites tagged with relted keywords.
The idea is that due to the increasing popularity and proliferation of niche subject social networking sites thanks to Ning et al, users have a way of finding like-minded communities and these social networks receive targeted traffic that helps build user base and monetize.
Please take a look! We’re still building the database. Feel free to register and submit your niche social network or social media site for free.
http://findasocialnetwork.com