Ning Bling

I’m a week behind on the writing, so, let’s catch up.

On the Ning social networking assignment, I did steps 1-4, 6 (and this is 7) of the assignment, but I didn’t do 5, 8 or 9. I skipped 5 (add a message to a forum) because a) I do this all the time on other forums, and b) the original message is over a year old, making it old news in my book. I don’t know whether there are official Emily Post guidelines on how late you can add comments to an existing thread, but my personal limit ranges from a week (on high-traffic forums) to two months (on slower ones).

With regard to point a above, I have been a member of a number of “social networks” for a while now, mostly related to tech stuff [like Filemaker Forums (www.fmforums.com) or Mac OS X Hints (forums.macosxhints.com)], but I also am a member of the biggies, MySpace and Facebook. I joined MySpace and Facebook back when they were taking off, so I could see what all our middle and high schoolers were so worked up about. My MySpace account languishes; I do use my Facebook account more.

Compared to all of these other networking opportunities, Ning just doesn’t do much for me. Most of the groups I found were really new and had very little traffic. To me, the best part about social networks is that people discuss issues and share knowledge and experience (that would be the “social” in social networking). As I saw it, Ning didn’t have a lot of that yet. Since that buzz it what a good social network needs for me, I didn’t get all that excited by this realm. Furthermore, I didn’t find any networks that interested me. For example, a search for “library cataloging” brought up a bunch of networks for specific libraries (like Hearst Library in South Dakota). I also got things like Library IT, which purports to be “putting together a resource of online tools for library patrons.” None of these would be helpful for me if I were actually interested in a social network on library cataloging.

One thing I really didn’t like about Ning was the fact that each network required an additional sign up and log in. I would figure that my initial login would at least streamline the process a little. Furthermore, some of the networks don’t show you any substantive content before you join, so it’s tough to tell whether you really want to join. It’s frustrating to sign up for a network only to find once you’re in that there are three members total, and the whole thing is in the planning stages. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a lot of these networks are set up by unscrupulous types who are after email addresses for their MLM empires.