Let’s say you’ve gotten revved up in all the buzz of social software, Web 2.0 (3.7? 10.0?), folksonomy etc… How many of us really have the prowess to sit down and code something like flickr or del.icio.us or facebook?? Well, I just too k a glance, but I would guess Ning is the thing–
Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for building and using social applications.
Social apps are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people.
It looks like Ning provides a platform to build your own specific social app that works like Craigslist, Match, Zagat, Flickr, Facebook, del.icio.us, or Your own take on Hot or Not? And it seems to be incestuously tagged. For example:
* This Or That provides one of those silly places to upload two photos and have public votes for who is “hot” or “not”
* Bookshelf is a Zagat rating like site for book reviews linked to Amazon or see Rate My Teachers for another flavor of the same app
* Blinddogster is a Match.com site made for setting up profiles, in this case )pr perhaps poor taste?) Have a blind dog? A one-eyed cat? Add his/her profile and share tips for caring for you vision-impaired pet. Helmet designs for fearless spaniels particularly welcome.
* code snippets is… well I am nto sure what sort of category it falls into
* Anytown Listings looks like the demo for a Craigslist knockoff
* SimplePhoto is a flickr like clone
All the sites feature account creation tools and a layer of tagging… so one can look at tags across different kinds of Ning sites.
I am waiting on my account to be approved before I play around, but this is some pretty powerful stuff and taking it perhaps to level Web 3.5? For example, just a few weeks ago, I spun my own version of a mini flickr site where now it looks like 10+hours of coding could be done in about 15 minutes of clicking through Ning set up screens.
I am smelling the odor of possibilities here.
A tip of the cogdogblog hat to Albert Ip’s Random Walk in E-Learning
