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Ning (website) 148
Ning (website)
URL http:/ / www. ning. com
Slogan Create your own social network for anything
Commercial? Yes
Type of site Social networking
Owner Marc Andreessen, Gina Bianchini
Created by Marc Andreessen, Gina Bianchini
Launched
Current
status
October 2005 [1]
Online
Ning is an online platform for people to create their own social networks, [2] launched in October 2005. [1] Ning was
co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini. Ning is Andreessen's third company (after Netscape and
Opsware). The word "Ning" is Chinese for "peace" (simplified Chinese: 宁; traditional Chinese: 寧; pinyin: níng), as
explained by Gina Bianchini on the company blog. [3]
History
Ning started development in October 2004 and launched its platform publicly in October 2005. [4] Ning was initially
funded internally by Bianchini, Andreessen and angel investors. In July 2007, Ning raised US$44 million in venture
capital, led by Legg Mason. [5] In March 2008, the company also announced it had raised an additional US$60
million in capital, led by an undisclosed set of investors. [6]
On April 15, 2010, CEO Jason Rosenthal announced changes at Ning. The free service would be suspended and of
the current 167 employees, only 98 would remain. Current users of the free service will have the option to either
[7] [8]
upgrade to a paid account or transition their content from Ning.
Ning is located in downtown Palo Alto, California.
Features
Ning competes with social sites like MySpace, Facebook and BigTent by appealing to people who want to create
their own social networks around specific interests with their own visual design, choice of features and member
data. [9] The central feature of Ning is that anyone can create their own social network for a particular topic or need,
catering to specific membership bases.
At its launch, Ning was a free-form platform for the development and hosting of open-source "social applications." [4]
The source code for Ning applications was available to users, [10] and the service made it easy for anyone to fork a
Ning application, modify its PHP code and run it as their own. Applications included photo albums, blogging
software, and many for sharing business reviews. [11] In late September 2006, Ning narrowed its focus to offering a
group website, a photos website, and a videos website for people to copy and use for any purpose. These three
templates were later superseded by a single customizable application aimed at enabling anyone to easily create their
own social network. However, Ning does allow developers to have some source level control of their social
networks, enabling them to change features and underlying logic.