Marc Andreessen's Social Platform: Ning

An anonymous reader writes "As reported on SiliconBeat, Marc Andreessen has finally lifted the covers off his latest project: an applications structure called Ning, which makes the development of social websites like thefacebook.com and match.com more accessible. See TheGlu and Dating for examples of Ning in action."

Comments

What happened to farts.com, er, I mean loudcloud?

[autopr0n]

Sorry, I just can't take Marc Andressen seriously.

How many social websites are needed?

[CyricZ]

This seems like the sort of market where perhaps one or two major sites is all that is needed. First of all, you'll get the widest slice of the community with only a few major providers, rather than a few hundred smaller, more specific sites with a far smaller proportion of the population subscribed.

So while there could be a site for UNIX aficionados, and another for horse lovers, it'd be difficult to find somebody interested in both UNIX and horses when the smaller, specific sites are common. Both people could be listed in the more general, and larger, site. And thus it'd be easier to query for those interested in both UNIX and horses at once.

Re:How many social websites are needed?

[j1mmy]

The problem isn't the numebr of websites, it's the inability of social websites to mesh together. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to link to my friends on orkut from friendster and vice versa. There's also no reason a search on orkut can't pull results from friendster, and again, vice versa. If social sites could agree on a shared interface, they could all play together.

Re:How many social websites are needed?

[CyricZ]

But many of these sites are also businesses, and it makes no sense for them to provide business to their direct competitors. It would be like Amazon referring you to Barnes & Noble if you cannot find the book you're looking for at Amazon.

Re:How many social websites are needed?

[dalutong]

I disagree. If you wanted to start a network of evironmentalists this would be great. Or of a counter-popular network. Anything that wouldn't want to group themselves with a site like thefacebook -- not to mention that they might want to have a more professional, and closed, system.

Re:Screw Andressen - he supports outsourcing

[mustafap]

Well if you spent more time working and less on slashdot, maybe you wouldn't be an outsourcing target?

Andreesen = synonymous with "failed business plan"

[cpuh0g]

Besides scoring alot of stock options when Netscape went public, has this guy ever done anything that has actually been a success?

I think every business he tried to start since leaving Netscape have bombed.

Color me unimpressed by lucky Mark's business acumen.

Ning and Web2.0, the bubble is growing

[Anonymous Coward]

So how the heck do they think they're going to profit from this? So now every single person on planet earth with an Internet connection can create their own social networking website. That just made all these websites worthless.

This whole Web 2.0 thing is a huge bubble. Everyday a new, supposedly Web 2.0 app comes out. Out of all these apps, do they think they'll be able to capture a large audience? All they get is 15 minutes of fame and then die out sitting in the corner of the Internet collecting dust. VCs are throwing their money as if these websites are going to be make money for them, and we all know most of them won't.

I don't know who here agrees with me, but I'm sure many people out there do.

Breakthrough in Social Network

[wjzhu]

The best musicians may not build their own instruments, and the best film makers and photographers may not build their own cameras. Currently social network sites are created only by those with significant technical ability. Now with Ning, the tools are built and ready for social-artists to use: people with great social-IQ can develop some amazing social webtools that we may not yet imagined.

Re:Everyone's missing the point

[donnacha]

Hi Amy, having read both your blog post and Ning's voluminous FAQ, I see a major road-block to the series adoption of Ning as anything more than a playground, one that will see thousands of abandoned, short-lived experiments - a sort of sourceforge of social websites.

That road-block is money: the admins, who are expected to invest time energy in tailoring their Ning-based websites to their target audience and then generating enough buzz/awareness to build the necessary momentum and userbase to actually make their websites useful, are not allowed to include any adverts because Andreessen & Co will already be inserting ads and explain that "don't look warmly upon more than one person running ads on an App or a page".

The real zinger, however, is that they helpfully suggest that you integrate Paypal and charge for your service. It's not hard to see that most apps that build any traction will turn to this option as the only way to gain some reward for their efforts and, obviously, to build a wall around their service/retain exclusive value, will default to tag their data as "private", killing the whole shared data eco-system concept.

I found your Rails articles a few months ago interesting, I'm surprised that you don't considered that a much better route for anyone with the imagination to invent new Web apps.

Re:Imposter Boy

[Anthony Boyd]

Wow, that just reads like a lot of bitterness. I wonder if the journalist is peeved that Marc blew off his questions. You could rewrite the article to use complimentary terms instead of critical ones, and the facts would remain the same, but it would appear almost praiseworthy of Marc. For example:

Then Andreessen used the prototype as a ploy for recruiting a colleague named Eric Bina to team up with him.

A ploy? Really? Like Andreessen lured Eric into an evil scheme? The author could have written "Then Andreessen used the prototype as a proof-of-concept for recruiting a colleague named Eric Bina to team up with him." Suddenly its not all conspiratorial. In fact, it almost makes Marc sound determined or resourceful.

Any article that uses adjectives and subjective language to damn someone is pretty weak out of the gate. On top of that, half the stuff the article "rebuts" I had never heard. Marc didn't invent the first browser? Duh. Marc has always been "sold" as the guy who created the first browser with inline graphics. And he didn't write code at Netscape? So what? He wrote code at NCSA. By the time he got to Netscape, he was in a leadership position. That article's critique of Marc is bizarre.

Ming's too restrictive.

[Anthony Boyd]

we don't let you run your own ads from third party ad networks, such as Google AdSense

Poof! Widespread adoption peters out right there.