Is there a "Ning Effect"?

I had a hallway conversation last week with someone who wondered about a specific group on Ning and the lack of activity in that group. While I'm not sure if this is true, I described it as the "Ning Effect".

It is easy to create group or topic areas in Ning and for people to join in. Often people join with the intention of being active, but what happens? It could be that people doing have time to be active. It could be that the group doesn't engage people well enough. It could also be that joining doesn't mean that the person is saying that he will be active, but rather an acknowledgment that the topic is of interest. So Ning allows people to say that they like a topic without ensuring that they will be engaged in the topic.

If this describes you, you are not alone because this also describes me. I'm promising to change by first removing myself from groups where I really am not going to participate and then creating time to participate in those groups that truly interest me. If you are using Ning and have joined groups that you are not actively participating in, you may want to do the same.

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Technorati tag: Ning

Zen's monthly newsletter (Excerpts related to Ning & YouTube)

There is an interesting newsletter that is produced in the U.K. each monthly Zen Internet Ltd. The newsletter -- which can be read or listened to -- provides quick information on Internet technologies. Here are two excerpts from the Dec. 2007 newsletter:

NING

Ning, a service that lets people with no technical knowledge create their own social networks, has passed a new milestone: Users have created more than 115,000 individual networks, the company said. Offering the opportunity to "Create Your Own Social Network for Anything", Ning lets you set up a Web site with features such as a forum, blogs, photo gallery, groups and more all in a few minutes. It’s also a platform for developers to create their own features. But it’s still not clear how it will ever get big enough to justify the massive $44 million investment it received earlier this year, or the $9 million spent on development and running costs before that.

http://short.zen.co.uk/?id=8dc

http://www.ning.com

VIDEO TO GO

Quivic allows you to download streaming videos from YouTube to your computer and convert them for playback on your PC, iPod, Cell Phone or Sony PSP. You simply supply Quivic with the Web address of the video you want. Quivic can download and convert multiple videos at once. Quivic will also convert any flash video file (FLV) on your computer to WMV, MP4, 3GP or 3G2 file format. The free version adds some watermarking.

http://short.zen.co.uk/?id=8de

To read or listen to the entire newsletter, go here.

This is a newsletter that you might want to subscribe to. You can read it or listen to it while you work on something else. I just listened to the December issue while shredding documents and doing some filing.

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Technorati tag: YouTube, Ning

Ning!

The name says nothing about what it is, but Ning is a growing social networking service that allows you to "create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds." In Ning, you can join multiple networks on topics such as:

• The Business District
• Women in Film & Video
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
• Library 2.0

Some groups are open to anyone, while others are "invitation only." Group pages allow for forums, posting of videos & photos, information from member blog posts, and other stuff. The group "owner" decides what can be on the group page.

Members also have individual pages on which they can include a variety of things as well as customize the look of the page. Unfortunately, a person who is part of multiple networks in Ning must setup an individual pages for each network. That can be a pain the "back side" after a while and also make it difficult to track "what's where."

Although I first was thrilled with Ning, I quickly found it difficult to keep up with the multiple conversations. Ning does allow you to follow the forums through RSS feeds, but that has not kept me truly connected with my groups in Ning. Personally, I find that I will use Ning when I have a specific question that I feel one of the groups on Ning can answer for me. Others, though, find Ning quite useful and some groups have found very interesting ways of using Ning. For example, the two-day conference in Australia called "Beyond The Hype 2008: Web 2.0" is using a Ning group to disseminate information to people who are interested in the conference and allow for those people to interact before the event. This is a very focused group, which seems to be working well.

Is Ning for you? I don't know. I do think it is worth looking at. Do a search and take a peek at some of the groups. You might want to join an active group, setup a basic page for yourself and participate for a while. See who you can connect to and what information is being shared. You may not really know if Ning is for you unless you jump into it.

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Technorati tags: Connecting, Sharing, Ning