Ning: All Our Charts Point Up And To The Right

March 20th, 2008 at 7:09 pm

Michael:
You don’t think that Flux chart is due to some calculation mistake?

March 20th, 2008 at 7:32 pm

I hate to provide Alexa in a traffic argument, but they don’t show nearly the same drop for Flux.com as Compete does:

http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....s/flux.com

Can’t wait to find out what the actual numbers are Michael. Ning is in the lead by far no matter what number set you look at, and I believe they will continue to grow especially after this redesign. I think the reason comes down to the determination that the Ning executives and staff has. Their pro-freedom stance is also a big reason I’m sure, because it differentiates itself as one of the few user created websites allowing that much freedom and attracts those niche networks built around controversial topics.

March 20th, 2008 at 7:34 pm

Yeah the thing about their revenue is, it’s really freaking hard to find the premium services, like making your own social network not have ning all over it, or having it on your own domain.

Plus when you do find it, it seems like you have to contact them versus an easy “buy it now” route.

Those are my pains with Ning, oh and customer service isnt so great…

March 20th, 2008 at 7:53 pm

You should be comparing Ning to sites like YouPorn - that’s their real competition. Unfortunately for Ning, there aren’t many buyers of unprofitable porn sites.

March 20th, 2008 at 8:04 pm

http://www.quantcast.com/ning.com

most traffic goes to:
girlongirl, freep*rnpost, whiteholes4blackpoles, bigd*ck

March 20th, 2008 at 8:10 pm

I set up a network on Ning for my High School Alumni Association more than a year ago and it now has 2200 users. Very, very pleased with the platform.

We users who range from 18 - 83 years old! Seriously. Our oldest user is ‘Bernice’ a retiree who lives in florida graduated in 1925! This is relevant because for most of our users, this niche, localized social network powered by Ning is their first exposure to a social network. They have heard of facebook and myspace, etc… but many feel intimidated by them… and like the comfort of a smaller community that they are somewhat familiar with.

Our alumni association now has a robust social network and we are able to engage the community for a whopping $300 a year. We will never move. The switching costs would be way to high.

In addition, I receive 3-5 emails or comments a week from other members who ask me how they can set up a similar site for their university, kids baseball team, band, etc, etc.

This is why Ning is going to succeed.

Great product. Great customer service. Great updates. Great price. It is also very, very simple. That is the most important part - especially for your average Joe.

KAP

March 20th, 2008 at 8:30 pm

When do you think they’ll reach their saturation point?

March 20th, 2008 at 9:28 pm

I would say Kickapps is definitely way more feature-packed and a lot more customizeable. Although, Ning is extremely fluid for the simpler user. Kickapps is on the verge of actually replacing the need for top brands to build their own network from scratch. Ning definitely is not, but is still the best white-label offering for a highschool to start their own social network.

Otherwise, regarding Flux, my guess is there numbers are low because the product sucks! Have you seen any of their networks (50cents, Life of Ryan, etc)–they are complete cookie-cutter solutions with minimal features and horrible customization. People don’t take their sites seriously and their visitor loyalty is probably horrible. Ning on the other hand doesn’t have the likes of famous music artists getting people on mass to come by for one visit and never come back again, but they do have real evangelists.

Either way, what I would like to see is more of a programming language–like Facebook’s FBML–just for building your own social networks (”SNML”). Kickapps API is extremely comprehensive, but is missing a lot. The problem here is that these white label social network building tools are made mainly for non-developers. This is why I’m building one made first and foremost for developers, specifically xhtml developers. It includes an extremely advanced drag-n-drop interface, with many components to “drop,” as well as our dynamic markup language and a menu-based markup selection system.

There are a lot of white-label RIA builders coming out lately like Roll Base, but ours focus just on Social Networking in a no bullshit way.

Contact me if interested in learning more. (sorry for this spammy post - had to do it this time)

James
from
FaceySpacey.com - “The Startup Incubator”

March 20th, 2008 at 9:41 pm

Ning is definitely interesting. Whenever I stumble across a very nice looking social networking website that’s somewhat original, but not completely custom, I know it’s probably Ning.

and that’s a big plus for Ning, in my book.

for me, i would have loved to use them for some projects, but i could never get over what i perceived to be the ‘loss of control’ issue - would the users ‘be mine’, could Ning shut me down at any time for no reason at all?, etc.

but, props to them for at least providing infrastructure for folks.

their real competition from the semi-tech crowd is folks like me, who have been relying on drupal (poopal), wordpress, etc. all of these software packages suck in some major regard (crappy forums, crappy forum integration, etc.), or just require installation of a dozen unsupported plugins to have a semi-functional site.

me? i’m sick of custom coding and free software. give me something open source and something that works, and i’ll pay for that mess. Movable Type might eventually offer a ‘community solution’ that you’ll be able to pay for, but thus far, it’s still vaporware.

And WordPress just hired the BuddyPress dude, so they’re going to do something in this space, too.

i’d like to see a full review of the new Ning - pluses, minuses (can u export all data, for instance?), and I think Techcrunch should partner with DemoGirl so we can have a semi-critical demo of any new site and/or release. Screenshots are great, but they’re limited.

March 20th, 2008 at 10:36 pm

I’m with whoopie, how many of ning’s network’s are actually used?

March 21st, 2008 at 1:02 am

I love ning, I even setup my own network: http://failure.ning.com

Keep up the great work, guys, you’re doing a Heckuva job!

PS: Sorry if this appears twice. The first time got blocked b/c I included a link to my buddy Alan Greenspan’s social network, which is also on ning.com. It’s at “alangreenspan” instead of “failure” in the URL.

March 21st, 2008 at 3:53 am

I think this is so funny :-

“most traffic goes to:
girlongirl, freep*rnpost, whiteholes4blackpoles, bigd*ck”

and

“I set up a network on Ning for my High School Alumni Association more than a year ago and it now has 2200 users. Very, very pleased with the platform.”

So far Ning is a great sink for adult traffic. Lots of adult webmasters are using it for offloading bandwidth to them and also for grabbing new viewers. No doubt just like paypal and others they will ditch the porn when they get an IPO, but for now its all gravy for the traffic.

However if they could provide the tools for those users like the one who set up the Alumni to sell their pics and content to the majority of porn surfers on the site I’m sure they’d have the first “ebay socnet”

March 23rd, 2008 at 11:02 pm

Flux’s chart would probably share the same headline as this post if they accepted porn.