Ning blog

Running a Ning Network is a lot like hosting an awesome party. But no matter how rocking it is, sometimes people leave and sometimes you have to kick people out. On Monday, we’ll be introducing more flexibility to the experience members have when they leave your Ning Network, and to the experience you have when you need to remove a member. These improvements will facilitate member management and keep the party going strong.

Along with launching our brand-new Ning Creators Network today, we’ve also updated the design and layout of Ning.com. As we first posted here, this is the first step of a redesigned Ning.com that will be focused on Ning Network discovery, Ning Network management and no default Ning-wide profiles.

We’ll have more on this update soon, so stay tuned. Thanks!

Today, we run Google Ads on the right-hand side of Ning Networks that don’t have the Go Ad-Free premium service.

Starting this Wednesday November 4, you may notice some changes to the ads that display in this right-hand column. We will start mixing in display ads, along with the contextual text ads that you currently see. We will also start targeting ads separately to Network Creators and members, so you may begin soon to see ads that only you as the Network Creator are seeing from Ning.

Every day, millions of people come together across Ning Networks to explore, express, and meet new people around their interests and passions. Today, we’re giving members another meaningful way to connect with Ning Virtual Gifts.

This customizable virtual gifts offering is unique in that it can be highly relevant to the activity of your Ning Network. As a Network Creator, you can pick and choose from hundreds of virtual gifts. Best of all, you can add your own custom gifts to the Gift Store. Check out how Lost Zombies is using virtual gifts for some creative inspiration:

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.

One of the great things about having a social network on Ning is that it’s fully self-contained. You can host discussions or share videos and photos, all in one place. That said, many people have other websites and set up a social network as a way for members to get to know each other and join the conversation.

If you have another website or blog, you can create a seamless experience for members and visitors clicking between your social network and your other site. There are a number of built-in tools on Ning that give you the power to do this. Let’s start create a website on the Ning.

One of the great things about your social network on Ning is that you can easily make it the hub of your online presence. You can even set up your social network so it appears under your own domain name. Using your own domain name brands your social network and makes it a place people will seek out when they want to learn more about your brand.

Good Charlotte has taken advantage of this feature to make their social network the top place to get to know their fans and communicate band news. They’ve mapped their social network to their domain GoodCharlotte.com.