Online Platform Ning Version 2 Launched

Ning, an online platform has offered Internet users, a free service, that allows them to create their own social network, called Ning version 2. Ning, currently has 30,000 social websites, and registered users in over 176 countries.

The new version promises to bring together powerful new features and levels of customization not offered by any social networking service before. Users on Ning version 2 , may mix and match their choice of features such as, videos, photos, music, forums, profiles and blogs from the list of options, customize every aspect of how their social network looks, add a logo make it public or private, and offer members the ability to make their profile pages uniquely their own.

Gina Bianchini, co-founder and CEO of Ning says, "We built Ning to give everyone the opportunity to create the exact right social network for them and their community whatever and whoever they define that to be. Everyone is different. We want people to embrace and celebrate that diversity."

Marc Andreessen, co-founder and CTO of Ning says, "Today’s social networking services are fantastic, but they are very similar in approach to AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy in the early nineties. They have a fixed and rigid view of what people can do. The web is filled with people who want the freedom to create, to express themselves, and to connect with other people in new and interesting ways. Hopefully, Ning contributes in a small way to this growing freedom for everyone."

More from News Analysis

Representatives clarified that unlike other social networking services, Ning is a platform, where users don't have to appeal to Ning for the features they want.

Users of Ning's paid version may also run their own ads on their social network at a fee of $19.95 per month. Also, users can use their own domain name for $4.95 per month and can purchase more storage and bandwidth in units of 5 GB of storage and 100 GB of bandwidth for a subscription fee of $9.95 per unit per month.