The Industry Standard - Ning exceeds 300K social networks by end of year - Comments

http://blog.ning.com/2008/07/

Bradley Baker — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 13:49:19 -0700

http://blog.ning.com/2008/07/355000-social-networks-on-ning.html

Message posted to Ning Blog (http://blog.ning.com/) on Sunday officially announcing that Ning had made it to 355,000 networks (and growing at 2,000/day).

Poster is Gina Bianchini, Ning's CEO and co-founder, so about as reliable as you can get.

We have success.

From Andreessen's

Bradley Baker — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:23:47 -0700

From Andreessen's blog:

"285,794 social networks have been created on Ning to date."

Looks likely that we'll hit 300k with 5-6 months to spare.

Not sure about the "is known to hold the company's metrics pretty closely." part. His blog has a network count that appears in the menu display.

http://blog.pmarca.com/ning/index.html

If ever there was a dead

Jim HUghes — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 05:04:48 -0700

If ever there was a dead cert bet on The Standard this must be it - http://thestandard.com/news/2008/04/18/social-network-creator-ning-raisi... - currently "over 230,000 networks on Ning now, growing at over 1,000 per day", means 300k will be met well before July is out.

Congrats Ning folks, nice growth!

I can see the point you're

Pieter Jansegers — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 06:46:33 -0700

I can see the point you're making Kurt. But at the same time, I'm believing that the power of Ning is in offering the network capacities to anyone who wants to begin a network on a subject she/he likes and can't find any to its liking on that subject.

A worldwide network on about any subject imaginable is now possible, created out of nothing in almost no time.

Let these networks the possiblity of organic growth. The growth ratio of the networks might even be a better indication than the numbers you're asking for.

It's perfectly possible to kill of one of your networks at ning if you see it doesn't work at all and you don't find the time for it after all. It even gives you the possibility to start a new network (normal maximum quotum of networks for one person to start being ten).

http://webosophy.ning.com

You need to be much more

Kurt None — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 13:42:42 -0700

You need to be much more specific about the size of each network. Are you counting networks of one person? Two people? I don't know what the minimum should be, but it's more than 2. Andreesen doesn't talk about the size of his 200K networks, and I am highly skeptical of his claim. Before this prediction can be made meaningful, you need to get Ning to announce the number of "real" networks.

Ning exceeds 300K social networks by end of year

The Standard — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:16:15 -0700

Judgment (see comments below)

On his blog, Marc Andreessen recently announced that Ning has officially surpassed 200,000 social networks hosted by the service, continuing at a torrid pace. Pretty impressive. But how long will it continue?

Ning added the second half of that 200K since September of 2007, i.e. over the last 6 months. This is a prediction that Ning will pass 300K social networks by the end of the year, i.e. 8.5 months now.

This is a difficult prediction to make, because Andreessen is known to hold the company's metrics pretty closely. If by the date of expiry no announcement has yet been made, all efforts will be made to contact Andreessen and co. for the neccessary information. However, it can generally be assumed that the company would happily announce the 300K milestone, so absent of any public metrics, the lack of an announcement of 300K social networks by the end of the year will lead the editors to judge the prediction unfavorably.