Ning your own social network? Sure but don't expect MySpace

Stan Beer
Sunday, 04 March 2007 10:34

Opinion and Analysis

The phenomenal success of Web 2.0 type destinations, such as MySpace, YouTube and Second Life, has spawned interest from all sectors of the Intenet community. Two of the latest items of news are Cisco's purchase of social networking technology from Tribal.net and the emergence of Ning, a do-it-yourself social networking platform, launched by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen. However, if you build it will they come?

As anyone who has gone through the pain of developing a website and building an audience for their online destination can attest, there are websites and there are websites that people actually visit.

Back in the Web 1.0 world, there are a multitude of products that enable ordinary web users to almost instantaneously put up their own websites for next to no cost. However, if someone knows of such a website that gets serious traffic please let me know, I would love to do a story about it.

The fact is that successful websites are usually professionally developed, constantly improved, have stacks of continually updated content and have full-time site directors. Anyone who thinks life will be any different in the Web 2.0 social networking space is only fooling themselves.

Cisco plans to use the technology it acquired from struggling early social network Tribal.net to help corporate clients establish their own social networks. That probably makes sense because large corporations with significant customer bases may gain some advantages by enabling customers to interact with each other and company representatives in a social network type setting.

However, Marc Andreessen, who has attempted to pour cold water over Cisco's moves, may be engaging in a bit of wishful thinking if he really believes that the masses will shun the big social networks in favor of home made boutique networks using the Ning platform.

As Andreessen and other players in this business well know, on the Internet, content, innovation and ease of use are the kings. MySpace and YouTube are blessed with all of those ingredients and each of the sites has its own special appeal. Second Life is growing in popularity because it offers a unique immersive experience not to be found on the other two sites. Without a doubt, each one of these sites has a full-time team working to keep them running smoothly.

If you want to build a social networking site devoted to fly fishing or the music of Kurt Cobain using Ning, then good luck, but don't expect more than a small fraction of the visitors to the huge networks on those subjects that already exist on MySpace. If your school or club wants to build its own social network using Ning then fine.

However, if you really want to build a social network that makes money selling advertising, then be prepared to have it professionally developed and funded with at least a small full-time team. Just because you can build it with Ning they won't necessarily come.