DanLin.net

Ning is a company that has been around for about 2 years now and this week they finally launched a product that is worth discussing. They are near the forefront of commoditizing social networks by allowing people to create vertical social networks based on their interests. Conceptually this is pretty cool and as it is free, it might have put fiveacross out of business had they not been acquired by Cisco earlier this month.

From a development and design perspective, the product is very beautifully made with gratuitous Web 2.0 UI features. Usability is very intuitive and setting up a social network is literally a few clicks away. I tested the service and created my own trendy Web 2.0 social network called ThunderAndLight.Ning.com.

Today’s social networks are like the message forums of the 90’s and the blogs of 2003. Ning to me is the PHPBB and Wordpress of social networks. The only difference is that it is free but not open source. I can see a lot of small organizations like schools and churches begin building social networks of their own using services like this. Ning’s business model currently looks like purely advertising driven and they are betting on the vertically integrated model to drive enough traffic to build revenue.

Founded by Mosaic co-creator Marc Andreessen and his protege and Stanford Business School grad Gina Bianchini (Link to Flickr profile), cash and industry connections are not likely gonna be problems. Let’s just hope this vertical market thing lives up to its hype.