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Ning’s new plans go live

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Ning dumps free social networksAfter nixing their free plans and embracing a pure premium model, Ning users are now able to choose the plan that is right for them, although Ning is giving users until the end of August to choose a plan or find a new home.

The three new plans – Ning Mini, Ning Plus and Ning Pro – are now live!

I encourage you to take a look at your choices and decide which plan makes the most sense for you and your members. You’ll have until August 20th to purchase a plan, which should give you ample time to make a decision. (Official Ning Blog) [Read more…]

Originally posted on July 21, 2010 @ 4:47 pm

Ning Valued at $750 Million

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Social networks are hot. People like to connect, and marketers could potentially make a killing with access to your social graph. Facebook alone is currently valued at $6.5 billion. Even Google’s getting in on the action through Google Friend Connect.

Imagine, then, the value of a service to create your own social networks. Ning, the hosted social network solution from browser inventor Marc Andreessen, just raised $15 million from Lightspeed Venture Partners. This latest investment round values the startup at — get this — $750 million. That’s pretty good for a freemium service without its own advertising platform, especially since only three percent of its network creators actually pay for ad-free service.

Free self-hosted social networking scripts abound on the Internet, but the average community leader has neither the time nor the patience to install and maintain such scripts. Ning could do for social networks what Blogger once did for blogs — idiotproof them for the masses.

Originally posted on July 22, 2009 @ 5:46 am

Create Your Own Community on Mixx

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I don’t know about your blog, but I pull a nice chunk from Mixx – something I can’t say about Digg. I now the site is stirring things up again with their self-dubbed “Ning for social media.”

Users are now able to build their own Mixx community site using a personalized subdomain. These microsites feature the content and design that the creator fashions.

Just like any other social community, members may join the group and submit stories of interest directly to the group. Of course, they may still submit stories to all Mixx users too.

Network creators select tags that will automatically pull sories from the main Mixx stream, meaning your part of th eMixx universe won’t starve for content.

Rounded out with a message board and stats feature, there are even awards for top submitters.

If you want to Make Work Better, you can check out my Jobacle Mixx community.

Originally posted on June 25, 2008 @ 9:06 am