Over the last few months celebrities have become something of a currency on the social web as services vie to attract big-name stars (and gather the resulting media coverage and new users in the process). Twitter has garnered the most attention for its roster, which includes celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah. Facebook too has been making strides in this area, especially since releasing its redesigned ‘Pages’ that allow celebrities and brands to broadcast their updates to fans.
Another contender in the celebrity hunt is social network platform Ning, which is already home to a number of social networks dedicated to celebrities, politicians, and musicians. Today, the company has announced that it has forged a partnership with The Collective, a management company whose clients include Enrique Iglesias, to create custom networks for a number of The Collective’s biggest clients.
Along with Enrique, Collective clients including comedian Eddie Izzard, and actors John Leguizamo and Taylor Momsen will be deploying their own social networks on the platform. And some clients, including The All American Rejects, Staind, and the Plain White T’s have already launched their own Ning networks as their homepages.
I spoke with The Collective partner Aaron Ray, who says that while the company’s artists will continue to maintain presences on other networks where appropriate, Ning has offered a greater degree of access to support personnel than other social networks have – clearly the site is going out of its way to foster its relationship with celebrities. But Ning SVP of business operations Jason Rosenthal says that the company is only interested in working with celebrities that will use their Ning networks to truly connect with fans, not just as vanilla corporate celeb properties.
Rosenthal also says that while many celebrities maintain presences across multiple sites, they tend to use Ning as their central hub, with their other profiles serving as satellite ’spokes’ linking back to their social networks. This isn’t surprising given the increased level of control a celebrity has over their Ning network, than say, a Facebook page. But celebrities won’t be dropping the other services any time soon – a Ning network may offer a richer experience, but casual fans are more likely to subscribe to a celebrity’s Twitter feed or Facebook page than they are to join an entirely new social network.
Is it the celebrities that made this sites popular? no, its the normal users. please twitter,ning etc stop this celebrity madness and believe in your regular users.
Virtually acquire Ning on http://www.webm...er.com/ningcom/
milker on link farming spree…
Buying and selling virtual websites? So it’s like a fantasy league for Web enthusiasts?
Test
who TF cares. TechCrunch, stop being such a shill for Ning. This kind of PR is stupid and undeserving of any “ink”.
You’re forgetting soulja boy! He uses ning for all his “websites” (piles of shit).
Ning is a joke and no one would ever talk about it if it didn’t have Andreesen involved. Add them to the deadpool!
now, now, fellas its either this or twitter. ning is an awesome platform that will be around for as long as social networks exist. unbelievable all the nonsense hate. all the haters obviously dont have social network or could even begin to know what it takes to make one and have people sign up and actually use the service. i have 850 members on my ning platform and it grows everyday on autopilot. the bottomline is social users want location, location, location to broadcast themselves. whom ever creates the greatest network of location, location, location, niche social channels will win the social network wars. some people build and some people blab.
NetworkLocator.com – build yourself
Fuck you. Bastard. Get lost from TC. Asshole retard locator.
It’s embarrassing that TechCrunch would cover this. Eddie Izzard? Is he a C-List or D-List “celebrity”? Let’s not forget that Ning has raised over $100m at an absurd valuation. The bar for this company should be much, much higher.
i guess ning can rebrand as the “b list” network.
i heard some guy who starred in 3 commercials in the 80’s set up a network on ning, too!
you have to admit – that is some pretty weak star power they are flaunting…
couldn’t agree more with Evan. GB must be using her charms on the TC writers to continue to get coverage for this never-was social network.
Ning is poop
I am curious to know how and if any discussions were had with The Collective re: moderation of content and how those celebrities will react when they see their faces superimposed on porn.
Yea great service. Create a website using Ning and have ALL OF YOUR DATA STOLEN…Then, when you want to move from Ning you’ll find out that you can’t. Well, actually, you can go but your members and data are staying with Ning!
Currently experimenting with a custom ning network. I wonder if The Collective negotiated a separate agreement with ning in order to maintain ownership of intellectual property and member data…?
Nings last remaining 3rd party developer has released a system that allows Ning networks to run Joomla modules.
This is serious. Its the best real news to come out of Ning in a long time. I’m running it on my own network and it has opened my cheesy ning network up to the usage of over 4,600 Joomla features.
Now my shit is solid.
http://www.sitesuites.com
Did you make this Ning plugin?
contact me for some serious joomla action!
were owners of http://www.ninjaforge.com a joomla subscription component club
No, I am not the creator of the Joomla Expander. SiteSuites is.
But I’ll be the first to say, it’s seriously awesome an makes Ning networks professional.
Any of you who want to do more with your ning network, check out http://www.sitesuites.com
This news prompted me to build a Ning community around my blog, Societrends, so I can say we beat Enrique Iglesias.
http://societrends.ning.com
THIS WEBSITE STATED “Ning is an online platform that gives people the freedom to create their own social networks for anything.”
THATS A DAMN LIE…THEY GAVE IN TO GOOGLES “NO PORN” RULES BUT YET GOOGLE PROMOTES PORN ON THEIR SEARCH ENGINES FOR MILLIONS IN REVENUE. HIPPO-KRITZ