Somewhere amidst all of the Twitter hype a really big statistic was achieved, the creation of Ning’s one millionth social network. In a world where follower counts are lauded or decried for sheer girth, where it’s cool to just to be seen using the tool even from space, communities are bubbling to the fore.
One million subject matter specific communities, one million places where specific discussions related to some sort of common interest are occurring. Six million visits a month demonstrate recent features and additions are making their impact felt.
Sure, I know some of them are dormant, but traffic (pictured above) keeps increasing, demonstrating 6,000,000 unique visitors a month to Ning communities. Not too shabby for a social network oft criticized for serving the niche instead of the many, for being too small to be relevant. heck, there’s even a Ning for Dummies book now.
What’s relevant about Ning’s rise is that smaller groups of people are congregating to actively discuss the issues that matter to them. While mass-Twittering matters in the hype engine, the actual development of communities is accelerating.
Because we are so accustomed towards communicating with big channels, Facebook, Twitter, etc. are now the apple of our echo chamber’s eye. Yet online conversations are not about the wide swaths of tens of thousands of people, rather hundreds that actually interact with each other (see Valeria Maltoni’s breakdown of communities and Dunbar’s number). Social media has always offered the counter specialized content to the big mass market channel. And so it is only natural to see further splintering and the movement towards smaller, specialized communities even in the face of Ashton Kutcher.
Blog post title crowdsourced at #NTC09 – Lois de la fuente
Interesting, I knew that Ning was doing well but I had no idea they have been growing so steadily.
Thanks for the info :)
I think this is a very salient point. In rather a regressive way, my dad has often argued to me that people are fundamntally tribal and that we tend towards naturally smaller communities where we feel safer and have more knowledge and influence than larger ones. The way people’s behaviour seems to change dramatically away from their normal personal behaviour when in physical crowds seems to support this. People are often much more ‘themselves’ in smaller communities, which is why smaller networks are more relevant and probably stronger.
ning will be in hype around the world wide web soon I reckon ;)
I like Ning for a lot of reasons, the most important of which being able to really foolproof community building. The baseline tools for interacting with a community and community creation are all there. You just have to use them. I expect Ning to continue to grow…and maybe even someday eclipse some more popular social networks.
Good stuff!
I have developed several Ning networks – they are a great way for small businesses and organizations to build community and to supplement what a group is doing offline. Our church uses Ning to keep our committee conversations organized, and our local FM radio station, KPFZ (kpfz881.ning.com), will use it as a place for listeners to generate conversation off the air (we’re in beta at the moment).
It’s important to remember just setting up a Ning network is not enough – without a strategy attached to it (and users who are willing to get involved) it will just sit there – unloved and unvisited. So sad!
Also, read the fine print before you set up a Ning network. There are several ownership and legal issues I will be talking to Ning about that aren’t clear in their Terms and Conditions of use that I need clarified for some of my sites.
By the way, how is the “Bill of Rights” for Social Media users coming along? Not sure if Ning would totally comply….