Remember the story of the stealth startup that sucked ? Well, it is now out of stealth mode, and has officially launched as Ning. From their FAQ:
What is Ning?
Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for people to build and run social applications. Social “apps” are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people.Our goal with Ning is to see what happens when you open things up and make it easy to create, share, and discover new social apps. These might include for any city, your own take on Craigslist…for any passion, your own take on Match.com…for any interest, your own take on Zagat…for any event, your own take on Flickr…for any school, your own take on the Facebook…for any topic, your own take on del.icio.us…for any mammal, your own take on Hot or Not or Kitten War.
You choose the app, decide for whom it’s most relevant, create the categories, define the features, choose the language – or just clone an app that’s already up and running on Ning – and be on your way.
So after being offered a large number of social media applications, we are now into the meta-framework to build social media applications. The notion is interesting: as we have come to expect that any consumer application will include some element of social networking, collaborative filtering, tagging, etc., Ning has the first shot at claiming platform status in the social phenomena by offering building consistent building blocks (though wikis could probably claim anteriority). The list of applications is a bit limited for now, but there are certainly a number of interesting ideas.
I have asked for a developer account, and presumably I will grok more on the service when I get it. Fred over at TechCrunch thinks that it is potentially significant, and as has been in the past when users have been turned into developers.
However, having used over the years Lotus Notes, Groove, and having built the equivalent for the financial markets (now called Reuters 3000 Xtra), these kinds of platforms are only as good and interesting as the best applications that have been developed using their framework.
I guess that we can expect a catalog of great applications that will show the power of the platform, and allow users/developers to copy code, tweak and deploy. This one looks a bit similar to wondir for example.
There is actually an interesting knock-on effect here: web 2.0 applications just got potentially even cheaper/easier to develop.
Congratulations to “Mobile Monday” Mike and Diego for working hard with the rest of the team to deliver this interesting (meta) application/platform/framework.