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Earlier this week, we wrote about how you can use Ning Apps to add a store to your Ning Network. Ning Apps are also incredibly useful for driving donations and fundraising efforts. Hawks for Homeless is a Ning Networks that’s using a Ning App to help drive donations to the The Midnight Mission in Los Angeles:

Other Ning Networks like TuDiabetes and The Hoot Owl have launched similar fundraising efforts. Adding your own fundraising Ning App takes a few quick steps.

Your Ning Network can be a place to see beautiful images, set out on new adventures and connect with other members around shared interests. It can also be a place to make a little extra cash. Included in our Ning Apps launch from last month are several Ning Apps that you can use to sell products directly from your Ning Network. For example, Every Day Moms is using the Sellit Ning App to sell homemade crocheted gifts, directly from its Shops tab.

No one likes spam, especially us. It makes for a less-than-awesome Ning Network experience for members and makes a Network Creator’s life harder than it needs to be. While we’ve been building spam prevention into more and more elements of the Ning Platform, we’re constantly looking to drive more spam prevention projects that make Ning even better. Some of these projects are obvious and others are behind-the-scenes. Our ultimate goal is to eliminate spam on your Ning Network before it ever gets there.

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Ning Apps, available today on your Ning Network. As a social platform, we’re finding that each interest and passion requires a unique combination of features. Ning Apps dramatically expand the quantity and quality of the features available on your Ning Network, and allow you to engage even further with your members.

Today you can choose from more than 90 Ning Apps, and that’s just the beginning. This number will continue to grow as developers here at Ning and around the world build additional Ning Apps tailored around your interests and passions.

Some Network Creators want to share their social experience with the world, while others create Ning Networks just for close friends and family. To embrace these different preferences, flexible privacy settings are built in to every Ning Network.

As a Network Creator, you have many different options when it comes to the privacy of your Ning Network. To adjust the privacy settings, go to the Manage page and then click “Network Privacy”:

From this page, you can choose the ideal privacy settings:

As we wrote earlier this week, choosing and promoting the right Network Administrators can help you manage your social network’s members and content. Administrators have access to the Manage page, just like Network Creators, though they don’t have access to the Premium Services, Network Information or Analytics sections.