UNI Communicators' Forum

I like Ning quite a lot. It isn't that flexible (they're tardy with promised updates), but the basic package is pretty comprehensive, and certainly worth having a play with.

I also like that they try to push off responsibility for publishing and administration onto the account holder - might reduce the number of times that users get kicked out randomly as happens in Facebooki. But it's still not totally safe. If Ning.com goes under, you'd lose the network as you can't migrate it away. If they get a legal letter from an aggrieved employer, they might just demand you edit or they'll shut down the community, as I can't see them getting totally out of responsibility for content they host. Mind you, this isn't tremendously different from the risk of your ISP shutting you down.

If all does go wrong, you can export a user list, but not your full content, and not in a format you can instantly use elsewhere.

One alternative is ELGG.org, where you can take a framework and develop around it, as it's open sourcei, but it's developing very slowly. Unionbook.org uses it.

There are 3 (big) advantages to Ning:

• There's no development involved - you get an instant network (you need to have serious coders to use ELGG for example)
• They host it for you. An active community sharing stuff like photos and docs might hammer your hosting provision.
• There's a wider Ning community that can easily join your network (I'm in a couple of Nings already, and could just one-click join a new ones). This is obviously a much smaller constituency than Facebook users say, but may still be significant.