My First Social Network
Feb 27th, 2007 by Dan Blank
Michael Arrington informs us of the relaunch of Ning, a site that allows anyone to create their own social network, without the need for coding or developer skills. Startups like this are interesting, but to me, point to the overall trends that an individual can easily become a media brand. A site like Ning has some limitations, but allows people to take that first step into creating a compelling online presence.
As one person commented, as people setup social networks on sites like Ning and find success in building a community - they can then take the next step:
“most popular communities migrate away to their own platform because the ownership, full control and flexibility needed is just not available in a solution like this and once you get big enough, it doesn’t make any sense to outsource your fate.”
While you can probably point to any of these particular services and sites, and say that most of these social networks will fail, that is besides the point. Media companies are now faced with competition in the form of every individual on the planet.