On the Ning Nang Nong....

...where the trees go Bong (wrote Spike Milligan - see here for the rest of his poem). Ning has come out of beta, we've had Ningsites (e.g. Grumpybugger - the world's first Antisocial Network?) for a year but after another little play and gawk at the movie, here's why we are still underwhelmed:

- Its still closed - you have to belong to Ning.com to participate on our site. Why would you do that in a web 2.0 world? In fact, why risk someone else controlling your site if you want to monetise it.
- There are not many people on it* (see above)
- It has Ning's ads, not our Ads - and we make nowt for our content
- in fact, they own our content, not us
- They want to charge us money to take off Ads / put on Ads / use our own sitename etc

* well, we can't see any - but whaddaya expect from an AntiSocial Network?

In short, why wouldn't we just set up our own open SocNet site like we have with this blog - its not as if there is a shortage of platforms? However, we are a tad geeky so I supect its not aimed at us, rather at the consumerati

In essence its the SocNet evolution of Yahoo Groups - a MetaSocNet? - another Flickr or MySpace except you have your own Social Net rather than your own Profile. Our take - Good luck, its a tough play today - about a year too late (We were interested in using it as an open system to get a Social Net up last year for a client). The "Whats In It For Me" is just not compelling enough today for me to move my Groups off Yahoo or make any existing Blogsite closed. Now, what would be more interesting is if it were open (whats the bet Ning'll be supporting OpenID within a month and the IP ownership was retained by the sites.

Responses have been mixed : Rave On by Techcrunch (who initially panned it iirc), more careful at GigaOm, ShowTime at Scobleshow and downright doubtful at Don Dodge
. The Social Media Club view tallies closest with ours. German blogger Nicole Simon has a balanced take on it, and raises the concerns over privacy.

So - which of you buggers wants the 5 minute argument about Ning then?

(Postscript - one suspects that the driver of Ning, as with so many things, will be its porn capability)