Ning is a method of building social networks. Over a million people have created their own social networks. (And almost 4 of them have successfully monetized!) But what does Ning really do? What role might Ning have in the great web equation?
Let's think about Ning not from the network creator standpoint, but from the user perspective. Why does a user use Ning? Why create a profile for themselves when they already have multiple profiles around the web on Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter? The answer surely must be that the user intends a particular communication with that niche network audience. They then create a profile not only communicate with that niche audience, but to also convey a particular set of information.
Members of niche networks create their profiles to enable communication. However, doesn't this present a built-in redundancy? Doesn't Ning intend for users to belong to multiple networks according to their tastes, hobbies, and affiliations? Why have 10 social networking profiles when you could have one?
Ning attempted to address this redundancy this year by reintroducing Ning.com as a centralized portal for your various user profiles. From one screen, a user can now see the activites and updates of multiple networks. However, there are still multiple and completely variant user profiles in each one of these networks. There is no centralized way to update a user's profiles across multiple networks. The average user is left with fragments of their personality scattered around the web with no organic cohension.
However, we might view these multiple webpages not on their own, but as a tinted reflections of a central whole. Multiple social networks may be able to provide not singular profiles, but lucid realizations of one aspect of a real person. Put another way, imagine Facebook buys Ning. Facebook now provides a centralized profile and Ning becomes the presentation to a particular community that a user wants to express. Ning becomes a vehicle for self-expression coupled with community and audience differentiation. Multiple profiles become what we are in real life, not fractured pieces, but authentic experiential expressions suited for a particular audience. Ning ain't the cause of social networking schizophrenia. It's the solution.
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