Squeak of the Week

Unless you got that Ning.

In case you are unfamiliar, Ning gives anyone the ability to create, customize, and share their own social network, based around whatever topic you want (this, for example), in a matter of minutes. For FREE. And unlike MySpace, Ning actually looks good.

Let’s say you are a fan of Microbrewed beer and you want to create a social network to interact with other fans and get recommendations. After you create an account and give your new network a name, using Ning’s drag and drop interface, you can add stuff like photos, text, forums, blogs, music, videos, and RSS feeds to your new Microbrew network. You can then customize the look of your network by selecting one of Ning’s design templates and uploading your images, or, if you are more design (and code!) oriented you can upload your own CSS or HTML. Once you’ve finished with your design, you select whether or not you want your network to be public or private and you’re ready to start networking.

All social networks are hosted on NING’s servers, but for $4.95/month you can use your own domain for the social network you created.

So what does this all mean? How can companies take advantage of this?

Let’s say you want to harness the power of your brand’s biggest fans and give them a place to sing your praises. Or maybe you want to give your dealers an easy way to connect and communicate. Ning is a cost-effective (FREE!) and easy way to do that.

If you’ve got 12 minutes to spare and you’d like to see CEO, Gina Bianchini, demonstrate Ning, watch this video:

Download link

>>>squeezed by<<<