Ning – create your social network in seconds

Ning is a platform that allows anyone to create a social network in seconds. Using a templated process you select your themes and features. They have just raised $44m in venture funding and they are based in Palo Alto. I think its a great idea to provide a platform for anyone to express, share and socialize around any topic you wish. Ning, I in my opinion, is going up against Wikia and Demand Media. In terms of us as a competitor, I do get asked “so what’s different between the ‘vibEngine‘ platform and Ning?”

I do refer people interested in the vibEngine, to Ning who’s platform may be more suited (ie. set up a social network for free and almost instantly)…rather than creating a company providing a site, such as Minti.com

Richard from ReadWriteWeb, did a great comparison and I thought I would clarify a few points on the ‘vibEngine‘

• Vibe focuses on the customized market, corporates and budding entrepreneurs in equity or licensing options.
• We white label, as well as launch our own sites in key markets.
• The ‘vibEngine’ contains what we call our ’special or secret sauce’ of member ranking algorithms.
• We are a cross between About.com, Wikipedia/Wikia, Myspace and TripAdvisor, not just a pure social network.
• We have RSS content readers for subscription to internal and external content, as part of your member account.
• You can mirror your external blog, increase readership to your ’specific’ audience immediately.
• Gain reputation of your authored web published advice/experiences that could change the lives of others world-wide.
• You can search across all conversation types: articles, blogs, comments, group blogs, question+answer areas for a search term, latest articles, pretty much anything you what to subscribe to, an author’s work, blog, group blog, questions+answers, friends and chat privately with friends in your own lounge.
• We have self management systems to handle reported content and community issues, which significantly reduces flaming and really evil content.
• We have an international and a US focus.

And lastly,

• We have a global mission for distributing ‘collective wisdom’ and ‘advice and experience sharing’ …we are the ‘realty network of everyday experts’ sharing meaningful quality content, that has a ’social vision’, aiming to impact the lives of others in an ‘extraordinary way’.
• We are a platform to provide a ‘voice to pass something meaningful on’ to those seeking it.

See Richard McManus’: vibEngine, Ning and PeopleAggregator comparison blog post.

See Techcrunch’s profile’s on Ning in Full and Ning Raises a Big Round

Marc Andreessen’s blog post on Ning

Tags: Techcrunch, marcandreessen, ning, minti, rachelcook, family20, web20, socialnetworks, diy, peopleaggregator, vibEngine, venturecapital, angelfunding, demandmedia, wikia, wikipedia, about.com, myspace, tripadvisor