http://www.techcrunch.com Startup and Technology News Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:46:34 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Tonight at a Ning's developer event in Palo Alto, newly appointed COO Jason Rosenthal announced that Ning has reached 37 million registered users, as well as 1.6 million Ning networks created. The company also says that it grows another million users every couple weeks. Out of the 1.6 million Ning ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/05/ning-reaches-37-million-users-launches-developer-appathon/ Today Ning, the platform that lets users build their own social networks, is launching a new feature called Ning Virtual Gifts, bringing a built-in virtual goods store to the site's 1.6 million networks. Virtual gifts have become increasingly popular over the last few years, largely thanks to their popularity ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/20/ning-launches-virtual-gifts-allows-network-creators-to-design-their-own/ The idea of adding a social network to any site is a compelling one. Currently, most sites do this by creating their own networks using service like Facebook Groups and Ning. But those obviously aren't actually your own site, they are other sites set up under your site's name. Stribe's ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/15/tc50-simply-add-a-social-network-to-any-site-with-stribe/ Ning, the social network platform that lets users build their own social networks, has launched its application platform Ning Apps to the public. The platform allows Network Creators to customize the features on their networks by adding apps that have been created by third party developers, which include the ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/10/after-lengthy-delays-ning-launches-ning-apps-platform-to-the-public/ A lot of readers were incredulous over last week's news that Ning raised another $15 million in venture capital from Lightspeed Venture Partners at a $750 million valuation. That comes despite the fact that Ning traffic appears to be flatlining, and revenue to date is likely very small. A typical comment ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/26/investment-or-marketing-the-real-reason-lightspeed-invested-in-ning-at-a-crazy-valuation/ Do-it-yourself social network Ning has added another $15 million to its coffers from LightSpeed Venture Partners, the company has confirmed to us. This brings the total capital raised to $119 million. Its other investors include Allen & Co., Legg Mason, chairman and co-founder Marc Andreessen, and Reid Hoffman. Ning ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/21/as-nings-us-audience-flattens-it-raises-another-15-million/ GROU.PS, a do-it-yourself social network focused on moderated online collaboration, has raised $1 million in an extended Series A round of funding from Golden Horn Ventures. The company previously raised $1.1 million in Series A funding from Golden Horn in 2008. GROU.PS currently has 1 million registered members and 40,000 ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/25/groups-finds-1-million-for-diy-social-network/ 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 ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/13/ning-gets-a-star-studded-boost-from-the-collective/ Ning's social network-building platform is getting a huge boost today, with the private beta launch of Ning Apps, a new suite of applications and features that Network Creators will be able to deploy across their networks with only a few clicks. The news has been a long time coming ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/06/ning-apps-bring-a-new-dimension-of-flexibility-and-power-to-the-social-network-platform/ Ning is going to be reaching a big milestone this week, when it sees its one millionth social network created on its self-serve platform. Ning, which had its initial beta launch in 2005 and 'full' launch in 2007, makes it easy for people to create niche social networks focused ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/16/ning-1-million-social-networks-strong/ GROU.PS, a do-it-yourself social network focused on moderated online collaboration is launching a new tool, ActivityRank Pipelines. The feature is a point and reward system that lets moderators of a social network measure and rank members' content contributions and then extend moderation privileges to members based on these rankings. The moderators ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/15/diy-social-network-groups-adds-ranking-system-to-assign-privileges-to-contributors/ On Friday, during our cloud computing event, Whose Cloud Is It Anyway?, Charles River Ventures partner George Zachary noted, "The cloud is the new dotcom." He was one of the judges for the demo startups, and for good or for bad, he might be right. Cloud computing as ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/01/the-cloud-is-the-new-dotcom-video-highlights/ Tonight Ning will introduce new chat functionality, giving Ning network administrators the oft-requested ability to integrate a rich chat environment similar to the one launched on Facebook last April. Ning's new chat system is Flash-based, presenting users with a persistent chat bar along the bottom of their screens as ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/26/ning-launches-rich-persistent-chat-feature/ Our roundtable on cloud computing is coming up next week. (Get tickets here via Eventbrite: $75 each based on availability). In addition to the previously announced speakers, I am happy to announce a few more very special participants: Amazon's chief technology officer Werner Vogels, Ning CEO ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/19/amazon-ning-facebook-and-rackspace-join-our-cloud-roundtable/ At the beginning of last December, Ning reversed course on its anything-legal-goes policy by declaring a prohibition on adult social networks. The reason? Porn wasn't paying the bills; instead of attracting advertisers, it was scaring them away. Legal adult content was also begetting illegal content, which drew the ire of ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/13/ning-doing-just-fine-without-the-porn/ Canadian start-up Yourmagz.com launched the closed beta version of its SaaS content distribution platform today. You can sign up to view the site. The platform - which can be described as a hybrid between social network platform Ning and web document sharing service Scribd - specializes in distributing publishers' content ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/05/yourmagzcom-marries-ning-with-scribd/ Year end Comscore numbers for the U.S. audience are out. The first thing we checked? How the major social networks are doing. Facebook, which became the largest worldwide social network in mid 2008, is still playing catch up to MySpace in the U.S. They have 54.5 million monthly unique visitors, says ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/13/social-networking-will-facebook-overtake-myspace-in-the-us-in-2009/ The eviction of Ning's adult sites is in full swing. The actual shut down of the sites doesn't happen until January 5 (extended from January 1), but the sites that are affected have now received an email with instructions on how to get their content off Ning. Ning CEO Gina Bianchini ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/20/the-ning-exodus-begins-adult-networks-its-time-to-gtfo/ On Tuesday Ning changed its long standing policy on allowing networks that show pornography and adult material. "Adult social networks don’t pull their own weight," Ning CEO Gina Bianchini said, and "our ad partners aren’t big fans of the adult networks." As far as I can tell, at this time Ning ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/04/what-exactly-is-adult-content-google-forces-ning-onto-a-slippery-slope/ YouTube is trying to clean up its act by cracking down on sexually explicit videos that are just short of porn and spam videos with misleading titles and descriptions. (Porn has always been grounds for removal). On its most visited pages, YouTube will now apply a "stricter standard ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/02/youtube-cracks-down-on-sexy-spammy-videos/ For those of you not closely following the drama between social network platform Ning and a popular widget provider called WidgetLaboratory, you can read the background here. On Friday Ning unceremoniously shut down their access to Ning, making all those widgets vanish. WidgetLaboratory cried foul, saying they'd done nothing wrong, that ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/24/dont-post-the-evidence-unless-it-supports-your-case/ Yesterday we reported on Ning's termination of its most popular premium widget developer, WidgetLaboratory. Although apparently justified, Ning removed all WidgetLaboratory widgets from its platform without warning to the community, and in doing so broke many of the social networks that had been created by its members. The ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/23/widgetlaboratory-strikes-back-at-ning-where-it-hurts/ Ning, the build-your-own social network platform, has removed all widgets created by popular premium developer WidgetLaboratory. The news has come without warning and is being met with outrage by a number of users who have spent hundreds of dollars on the widgets to build up their social networks. ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/22/ning-shuts-down-premium-developer-widgetlaboratory/ Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, Opsware and Ning and the former CTO of AOL, is adding a new notch in his belt: he has joined the board of directors of Facebook, two sources close to the company confirmed to us (speculation about Andreessen possibly joining the Facebook board started last ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/29/confirmed-marc-andreessen-joins-facebooks-board-of-directors/ Digg competitor Mixx just launched an extension to its groups feature that founder Chris McGill describes as "Ning for social media". Users can now set up Mixx community sites on their own subdomains (see ours here). Administrators have the power to brand them visually, post editorial content, and even make some ... http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/25/mixx-gets-serious-about-community-building/