Much before Facebook became the toast of the social networking circles, there was NING. Co-founded by Marc Andreessen & Gina Bianchini in 2004, this startup had raised over US $100 million, initially. It was acquired by Glam Media in September 2011.
Now, Glam is trying to resuscitate NING by re-launching it as a personal blogging platform for brands & people to help them pull together all their followers in one place.
NING allows businesses, brands, websites & individuals to create their own social platform & build their own communities.
NING serves as a platform for users to share their ideas, bring in debates, add photos or simply post blogs for their readers, or to be more precise for their followers. One can even promote one’s own product through NING. Followers can even post their own comments, ideas, suggestions, questions or even photos on your website. This makes the interaction between you and your members a close knit one.
This platform offers a variety of templates for setting up the customer page. You can control your NING account in a number of ways. For example, you can restrict your posts by a certain sub group or specific individuals.
A user can get complete information about his members through the medium of questionnaires or analytical tools that will keep you updated on their personal information as well as their activities. NING enables a user to promote its most participating members to be moderators who would assist him in growing his community, business or his product.
NING also offers the ability to integrate with other social networking websites such as Facebook & Twitter. One can rope in new members in the community by simply allowing followers/readers to sign up using their Facebook or Twitter accounts.
NING boasts of having approximately one million members & around ten million page views.
But the service is not free. The site offers 3 plans – the Basic Plan is priced at US $25 & allows a member to have 1000 members & 2 moderators. Next is the Performance Plan costing US $49, & lets a user have 10,000 followers & 10 moderators. The 3rd is Business Plan priced at US $99, allowing 100,000 members & 100 moderators.
Image credit: NING
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