Ning certainly continues to rock and roll, at least according to data released by the company and reported by Comscore. The company, which allows users to easily create social networks, now has over 200,000 social networks on the platform and is adding another 1,000 or so per day. And Comscore-reported traffic is spiking up nicely: 3.1 million unique visitors/month, generating 71 million page views (February 2008). Ning, in short, looks like it might be a real business. Meanwhile, Ning competitor Flux, which is backed by Viacom, seems to have fallen off a cliff (we’re checking with Comscore on that data – see our earlier post on Flux growth here, including the update). Update: Comscore notes that the apparently severe decline in the Flux graph linked to above is overstated because of earlier inflation, so it is not really falling off a cliff. It never rose high enough to fall in the first place.

More Bells, More Whistles

Tonight at 10 pm California time Ning will launch a redesign (screencast here) that includes a updates to the photos, videos, groups, members, profile, forum and blog features (see here and here)

Ning is certainly feature rich, and users are flocking to it (a little porn never hurts, either). What I’d really like to know is how revenue growth is coming along. The company generates fees from advertising and users who want premium features. They’ve raised more than $44 million to date.

The Viacom-backed Flux social network, which launched just last September, is really taking off.

Flux is a partially distributed social network. Like Ning (and more recently KickApps), it’s a place for sites to easily create a new social network, or bolt a social network onto an existing site, and add users from other platform social networks with a single click. Ning has the benefit of a big head start and over $44 million in funding. Since launching way back in late 2005, 165,000+ social networks have been created on Ning.

The two companies are serious rivals. In late November we published a point-by-point comparison of Flux and Ning as seen by Ning CEO Gina Bianchini. Few punches were pulled.

Flux is only a few months old, but had the benefit of not only Viacom’s money but also their brands – at launch hundreds of Viacom properties launched Flux social networks, including their MTV brands. In late November they opened the platform and anyone could join and create a social network.

Today, Flux says, they have grown to over a million registered members and 2,000 self-service created social networks. They also also released a developer API to give users more flexibility in creating social networks.

Flux may have far fewer social networks than Ning at this point, but the heft of the Viacom properties is clearly giving it a traffic boost. Comscore says Flux now has 5.8 million monthly unique visitors, compared to just 2.1 million for Ning (update: it has been pointed out in the comments that Compete data tells a different story).

Update 2: Flux may be taking off, but not as much as we thought. The January spike in the comScore data was a little suspicious, so we asked comScore to double-check that it was right. Turns out it was an “artificial increase” due to traffic not requested by users. comScore is revising its numbers to filter out the bad data. We’ll let you know what those are as soon as we hear.

Hosted wiki provider WetPaint has launched a new white label wiki service called “Just Add Wetpaint”, which lets businesses buy a customized version of their wiki platform (starting around $10,000). In at most 14 days, the company can pump out a customized community around a product. The communities are hosted by WetPaint on your domain, and share a common login with the rest of the over 600,000 wikis in the WetPaint community.

It may seem trite, but thousands of people are already creating unofficial wikis or joining communities (like fanpop) to talk about shows and products they love. Just Add Wetpaint gives businesses an easy way to generate an official community, as has been done with CSI, Dexter, Tmobile, the always-awesome Myth Busters, and even Oracle.

However, the move buts heads with other white label offerings (these) going after consumer brand communities, most notably Ning and Flux. Companies looking to launch their own communities will have to choose between the offerings (wikis and social networks).

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.

Silicon Valley based Ning and Los Angeles based Flux are “networks of networks” that allow communities to build feature rich social networks with a few clicks.

Ning, which launched in 2005, has raised over $44 million in capital and has 130,000 social networks on its platform. Ning was founded by CEO Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreessen, pictured to the right.

Flux, which launched in September, is a joint venture between Viacom and Social Project (formerly Tagworld). They are pre-launch, but power a number of social networks around Viacom properties (including MTV) and third party sites.

The two companies are on a collision course. Both platforms share users, meaning once someone has signed up for one social network on the platform, joining another one requires just a single click. Ning has built its community from the bottom up, and has benefited from backlash against the big, sometimes impersonal social networks. Flux, the newcomer, carries the weight of Viacom’s hundreds of brands behind it and will soon open up to any third party that wants to join.

But something about Flux doesn’t sit well with Bianchini, who sent us a long analysis of their business model. She goes into detail on Viacom’s history with partners, their tendency towards litigation, and conflicts between Flux’s marketing materials and terms of service. Flux undoubtedly will respond. For now they have no comment.

The analysis, written by Gina Bianchini, is below. I’m staying neutral on this for now until Flux fully launches and they’ve had time to respond to this. But I’ll say this – it is refreshing to see a company be willing to mix it up and say exactly why they think they are the better service. Too often, PR-speak gets in the way of clear communication. That certainly didn’t happen here.

Update: Social Project has asked us to point out that the sections of the “Terms of Service” excerpted in the post below are from the Social Project Terms of Use (for end users) and a third party Privacy Policy (also for end users). The information does not come from Flux’s third-party partner agreement. Third-party partners on Flux retain rights to their data and users. Social Project is an independent company with no controlling investor.

Read More

Flux, the new distributed social network that was created via a partnership between Viacom and Social Project (formerly Tagworld), has been busy since their September launch.

Flux is a “distributed” social network in the sense that publishers can plug it in around their existing site, effectively bolting a social network onto their existing communities. Viacom continues to add its hundreds of website properties to Flux. But dozens of unaffiliated third parties have joined, too (such as Winelibrary). See a list of many of the participating sites here.

Today Flux launched the first key part of their platform called fshare. In general its a way for sites with video content to allow users to share that content by placing it on other sites. See the 50Cent site for an example, and click on any of the latest videos on the bottom left of the page. Then click on the fshare button. You can then add the video to various social networks, or just add it to your list of favorite content. Friends from any Flux network will then be able to see that content in your “news stream” and add/share it themselves.

Ok, so sharing content in this way isn’t exactly rocket science. But seeing it in action shows the value of a decentralized network where each community has a stand alone community and culture but where members cross pollinate content around the various sites.

Flux is certainly similar to Ning (which by the way continues to grow rapidly, see Comscore chart). But the approach is different. Ning is drawing lots of users who are creating brand new networks, perhaps tangentially related to existing brands. Flux is all about taking existing sites, even big ones, and turning them both into social networks as well as part of a bigger network of networks. Both might do well – Ning has momentum, but Flux has huge existing partners right out of the gate due to the Viacom relationship.

The key point in Flux’s growth with come when they turn on the self service mechanism and let sites join the network at will. That’s promised for sometime this year, so we won’t have long to wait.

It turns out the rumors of a Viacom investment and partnership with social network Tagworld were accurate. Viacom invested a reported $40 million in the company for a minority stake (Tagworld was previously funded by Draper Fisher Jurvetson) and the two companies began working on new social networking products. Tagworld’s parent company has been renamed Social Project.

Tomorrow morning they are launching the fruit of that partnership – an ambitious new disaggregated social network around Viacom’s MTV, Comedy Central and other brands and associated websites called Flux.

Tagworld/Social Project cofounder Evan Rifkin and Mika Salmi, the president of Global Digital Media for MTV, walked me through the product earlier this afternoon. A screen shot of the unlaunched service is below.

The new service takes technology developed by Tagworld and Viacom’s existing Flux brand and creates distinct social network properties for each of the brands (some are launching now, hundreds are launching throughout the rest of the year). Like Ning, users who sign up for any network (say, Comedy Central’s) can join other networks (like MTV’s) with a single click.

As users add additional communities to their profile, they bring their content and friends with them. Flux is simultaneously a single brand as well as hundreds of distinct, branded social networks.

Not Just About Viacom Brands

Flux is opening up to companies and brands outside of the Viacom family. Twenty non-Viacom sites have been quietly testing the service for some time. See, for example, Vinyl Pulse and 50Cent. Both have integrated social networks built by Tagworld. They’re not yet co-branded under the Flux service, but will be now that the service is officially launching. New third party sites will soon be able to apply to join the Flux network; in the future there an API and other tools will become available that will let anyone join.

As I said above, comparisons will inevitably be drawn to Ning and white label social networks (see our overview of various white label services here and here).

But Flux really is a network of networks. While it is most like Ning, the walls between the Flux networks are very porous – uses drag content (photos, videos, etc.) between sites, perhaps grabbing a video from the 50Cent site and presenting it on their profile at the MTV site. While each community has distinct branding, the individual users see groupings of brands that they enjoy under a single profile.

What Happens To Taworld?

The existing Tagworld site remains as is, although the company is turning off new registrations for now and focusing entirely on Flux.