Monday, June 02, 2008

Ning as the New Ebay

I've been following the Ning blog lately, where they are increasingly profiling different Ning networks. (Full disclosure for our anonymous friend: I do consulting work for Ning!)

I'm struck by something lately. In a "long tail" world of increasingly varied interests, and where organizing groups has become "ridiculously easy," I sense a huge opportunity for the entrepreneurial individual. Creating and running a successful Ning Network around a topic now potentially places someone in a position to make a career of that role--or, at least, to springboard from there.

In fact, historically, I would argue that this might be an incredibly unique period of time in the history of business and social movements, where armed just with passion, authenticity, a proactive mindset, and time (notice the lack of financial prerequisites), the pioneering man or woman or youth can stake a kind of virtual claim and oversee the development of a topic area. It sure seems like Ning is the magic ingredient. At last count, 275,000 social networks. Wow.

3 comments:

  1. It is hard to disagree with your points, Steve. Ning has empowered us at TuDiabetes.com and EsTuDiabetes.com to build strong communities that now live under the roof of a nonprofit that we formed to run them. It's only been a little over a year... yet Ning has given us the tools in that time to make incredible things happen for many people touched by diabetes around the world. God bless Gina and Marc!

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  2. Hey, Manny! You must have gotten my message through LinkedIn. I'm SO interested in what you have done. Let's connect.

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  3. Anonymous1:03 AM

    Yeah, it's really working out well for us here in Asia to run some school parent communities. It does not have the ease of money making that Squidoo does, so not sure how to leverage this web knowledge togo beyond the non-profit crowd. I want to target 'prosumers' communities, and make revenues by getting my own local Ads instead of Google AdSense bucks going to Ning... Any ideas for that?

    On a Ning related note, is there any way to get source code for the platform? Is there a fee, is it openSource?

    thnks

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