Social networking provider Ning yesterday announced that it now hosts half a million social networks on its platform. Ning launched in February 2007 and has seen rapid growth and mainstream adoption ever since. According to Ning’s co-founder and CEO Gina Bianchini, Ning users now create a new social network every 30 seconds. As Dan Farber reports, 65 percent of these social networks are currently active and 3 percent of Ning’s users are paying $19.95 a month for Ning’s premium service.
Ning’s premium service allows users to use Ning on their own domain and run their own ads (or decide not to run ads at all).
Some of Ning’s most popular networks include Chris Pirillo’s Geeks! Network, a network for the Ellen DeGeneres show, and rapper 50 Cent’s social network. While Ning has a number of competitors, including KickApps and Crowdvine, Ning clearly leads the pack in terms of its user-base.
Ning is also very popular among academics and teachers, who often use it to set up networks and blogs for their classes instead of relying on more commercial platforms like Facebook or MySpace or having to use cumbersome class management software.
