Ning is Neat

Until last week, I was only vaguely aware of the Web service known as Ning--and the main thing I knew was that it had been co-founded by Marc Andreessen, the man without whom the Web as we know it might not exist.

Andreessen and Ning co-founder Gina Bianchini visited PC World last week to show off the new version of Ning which launched today. And by the time they left, I was excited about the service, which bills itself as a way "to create your own social network for anything."

One way to think about Ning is that it lets you create your own personal MySpace. That sounds gimmicky and faddish, but in fact, Ning looks wonderfully practical. It seems to me to be a logical successor to old-line Web services like Yahoo Groups and Google Groups--a way for people to create an online meeting place for kindred spirits who share an interest.

This new version of Ning has a nifty. AJAX-y user interface that lets you build a social network by dragging and dropping features, such as blogs, forums, and videos into place. There are plenty of templates (and plenty of customization options, from color schemes to the ability to plug in your own HTML). You can make your network public or private, and every member gets a persona page which he or she can further customize.

Ning, which is free in its basic form, is full of clever little surprises beneath its slick surface. The Ning branding on your site is low-key--but you can remove it altogether if you choose. Its video feature lets you create YouTube-like viral videos that can be embedded on any Web page--and those videos carry your social network's brand, not Ning's. Andreessen told us that the platform allows super-sophisticated users to insert their own code into a social network, essentially adding any functionality they can come up with. Ning puts Google ads on your site (which you can remove for $20 a month), but other than that, it pretty much lets you do your own thing.

Today's launch seemed to be a bit bumpy: Ning was up, then it was down, then it went up again, and when I played around with it, I encountered some quirks. But it's bursting with promise, and I'm already roughing out a social network for a club I'm a member of. If you're part of a group--big or small, real-world or virtual--check Ning out.

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