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Ning / This article appeared in Contagous issue Sixten. Contagious is an intelligence resource for the global marketing community focusing on Non-Traditional Media and Emerging Technologies. www.contagiousmagazine.com For more information please contac Harry Gayner on +44 (0) 20 575 1822 or harry@contagiousmagazine.com
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behind the hype / ning /
Ning / The social network creator / In the pas, everyone had 15 minutes of fame / By Josh Rose /
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ySpace, Friendster, LinkedIn, Facebook... we've just experienced a collective celebration of narcissism, selfindulgence, self-promotion and commoditised fame. But embedded in Warhol's oft-quoted premonition about the subject was the fact that most of us can only hold the attention and imagination of an audience for 15 minutes. So if we’ve all just had our close-ups, what's next? It could be Ning. Social networking site Ning.com is in a lot of business and tech headlines, but is no newcomer. Marc Andreesson and partner Gina Bianchini opened the virtual doors back in 2004, before Facebook was a household name (by household, of course, I mean college dorm room). Andreesson has already founded two billion-dollar companies (Netscape and Opsware) and he seems hungry for a third – a distinct honour held only by Jim Clark, a colleague at Netscape. What is Ning? Unlike the big social networks you already know, Ning.com allows you to create your own social network. Pick your subject, get your URL, invite your friends. It's as simple and as huge as that. Ms. Bianchini explains in her blog that the word Ning means 'peace' in Chinese but I prefer to see it as the ultimate suffix. Whatever it is that you're interested in, it's probably happeNING at Ning.com. No offence, China. Sideways wink face. For something that started in '04, it's seems awfully un-internetty for Ning to just now be getting the kind of ink it's been receiving. The talk around the www cooler is that Ning launched a little early for the common folk to really get it. You needed to know some code to actually have it up and working the way you wanted it. The developer community got
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contagious
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it, but the rest of us were like, WTF? WRS MY WYSIWYG? Then came the recent re-launch. Drag and drop features, easy set-up and admin, tie-ins to Flickr. No coding necessary. All of a sudden they're the coolest kids on the block with around 50 employees and close to 300,000 social networks to brag about. And to top it all, tiered plans and an advertising model that just might work. So, what's the significance? Subject-based networks The social networks on which we've been baring our souls to our potential future employers, are people-based. That is, the network is all about the individuals who make it up – a collection of profiles. And your experience of the network is mostly made up of communications between people. Even as that network becomes extraordinarily advanced, with an endless array of new widgets, it is still an experience rooted in the expression of the individual and the lines that emanate from that centre. A subject-based network, like Ning, is rooted in mutual interest. Small campfires with signs over them like, 'The Rolling Stones,' 'Crazy about Volkswagens,' 'Critique My Paintings,' 'Tennisopolis,' or 'The David Hasselhoff Social Network.' But it's not all just fun and games, Ning also hosts sites for businesses, high schools, tech labs, religious groups, young adults with cancer and a myriad of conservationists, to name just a few. Instead of lines radiating out from a person, the network runs on a potentially endless set of spheres within which any number of people can gather and participate. And that's a big notion for a number of reasons:
Most subjects are more interesting than most people. Certainly a few personalities can garner a lot of attention, but that's the exception that proves the rule. By and large, people have interests; they are not the subject of interest. To that end, a system that is based on what people do, rather than on who someone is, will be more useful and relevant to a greater portion of the population. The same way that the existence of an audience makes reality TV not reality, so too is one's Facebook page not really a true expression of a person. Being cognisant of an audience makes you do strange things. You project. You emote. You try to impress. And 15 minutes really is all most people can stand of that. But subjects, on the other hand‌ Talking about reading, art, diving, eating, music, cooking, biking or whatever your passion is – that's endlessly interesting. And, ultimately, more social. Growth Most social networks are only as big as their participants. Friendster, MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn all count the number of users they have as their criterion for success. But ultimately they all have the same ceiling: everyone on the planet. And although that's a big number, it's still finite. Ning's ceiling is much higher, perhaps limitless. Especially considering that it doesn't just include all the subjects in the world, but multiple viewpoints of each subject. It's not just science fiction literature, for example, it's sci fi literature according to writers on one Ning site and scientists on another. And you're welcome to belong to both. In people-based networks, everyone has one profile. In Ning, you can belong to as many networks as you like and since they're counting networks, not people, the possibility for exponential growth adds to the sense of limitlessness. And potential ad revenue. Speaking of which, from an advertiser's perspective, Ning is offering something the other guys aren't: safety. Social networking sites have been the dirty
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word of the advertising world for years now. Without any ability to be assured their ads aren't appearing next to nudity, profanity or just plain stupidity, many advertisers keep a healthy distance from the social networks, who are seeing a much smaller percentage of ad revenue than they do share of site visits. Ning is much better situated to promise advertisers not just sites with integrity, but, if they do their math right, every audience segmentation on the planet. So, what's standing in the way of total world domination? First, the concept is bigger than the execution and Ning isn't the only one which sees the potential. It's out in the universe. On the one hand, smaller start-ups, like Insoshi, Broadband Mechanics, and Lovd by Less are working hard, creating their own build-your-own social networks. And on the other hand, the bigger, more established social sites will most likely add 'Community' features to their network, too. And then there's Google. If you think they haven't already planted a chip in your head that will have you physically aching to join its social network, Orkut, with its own set of 'Communities,' well, you must have been born this mornin'. Ning recently moved its offices to right down the street from Google, in Palo Alto. Or, perhaps more accurately, Google simply closed its eyes, tightened its fist, Darth Vader style, and Ning just slid over there. Ultimately, though, the best thing about Ning, or the notion of subject-based networks in general, is that it puts our collective focus back where it belongs: on our passions, interests and creations. Not on ourselves. It's the end of navalgazing. It's healthy. It's better for our kids. Ning may or may not be the be-all and end-all of social networking, but something good is definitely happeNING. Josh Rose is SVP, creative director of digital at Deutsch, Los Angeles. www.ning.com www.deutschinc.com www.idvertising.blogspot.com Illustration: Marius Gedgaudas / Deutsch LA