The Long Tail of social software
Last week I wrote about Salesforce.com's new AppExchange and the Long Tail of software. Now comes Ning, aiming to help create the Long Tail of social software, which only sounds the same.
What's social software? Well, at risk of getting into another Web 2.0 definitional mess,
it's web-based software that builds on communities and peer-produced
content. The old examples were social-networking sites like Friendster
and LinkedIn, both of which I found annoying and ultimately of little
use. The newer examples are far better: Flickr, Craigslist, Bloglines and Wikipedia, for example. They're not just community for the sake of connection; there's actually something to do there.
Ning, which is the fruit of Marc Andreessen's 24 Hour Laundry stealth project, aims to make it easy to create such sites for niche applications. It's designed for projects that are below the level of a business plan and dreams of an IPO. It's meant to bring big-community online tools and features to hypernarrow interests and needs.
Examples include a sermon exchange, a babysitting co-op or a college semester abroad
community site. You might do it because you needed it yourself,
and--who knows--it might snowball into something more. That's the great
thing about community and user-contributed content. Simply providing a
catalyst can often be enough.
I haven't had a chance to spend much time with it yet, but right now it reminds me of Joe Kraus's JotSpot, which uses the wiki approach to creating niche hosted applications. That is to say that it looks very capable, but it's too hard to figure out yet. Ning just needs a few more really cool examples to highlight on its front page, and then show people how easy it is copy them and make their own. And some sort of directory of the apps already created.
Right now I'm looking for a Ning site for Bay Area biking routes, and there's really no good way to do it. The search function, which is tag-based, returns nothing I understand. Give them time--I met with Marc and his team while they were in stealth mode, and they're smart and practical. They'll figure it out.
Chris,
Don't distort the record. Webshots is an "old" example of social-networking that started friend circles, commenting, and massive amounts of user-generated content around photo-sharing years before others you mention.
Narendra
Posted by: Narendra | October 05, 2005 at 08:38 AM
Marc is smart but since his first hit has done nothing but miss (I should say really miss big and expensively) ... a true one trick pony ... he is like but Bill without the cash ... I'm not holding my breadth that he will hit anything
Posted by: bernie | October 09, 2005 at 10:29 AM
While CEO blogs are dropping off, I thing that startups are embracing blogs as a powerful tool.
Posted by: Jeff Barson | February 25, 2006 at 10:01 PM
http://www.hugechoiceof.com/
Posted by: account | April 23, 2007 at 12:47 AM
hugechoiceof hugechoiceof
Posted by: account | April 23, 2007 at 12:48 AM
http://sexy-frauen.bumst.at/
Posted by: ddfr | May 20, 2007 at 06:54 AM
http://www.nacktebilderlive.com/
Posted by: amateur | August 15, 2007 at 02:29 PM
http://www.frauen-brueste.net/
Posted by: frauen | April 02, 2008 at 04:42 AM