Build Your Own Social Network with Ning

Social networking is big.  So big that everyone’s jumping in.  Or trying to.  But Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn just don’t fit with every organization’s means, methods, and mission.  In fact, for many the fit is downright awful. While every organization is composed of people, most aren't about sharing highly personal information, playing games (and pranks), and testing ego boundaries.  That’s where Ning comes in.

Ning at www.ning.com is a lot like a Facebook community you build from scratch to suit your business or group.  Highly customizable in appearance, function and applications, it can include forums, groups, chat, polls, photos, blogs, games, sales and marketing tools, productivity suites (Google Docs, Zoho) and widgets and gadgets galore.  Members have their own, customizable pages.  Wow!

Before I get to the rave, I’ve got to tell you this.  The basic, ad-supported version (unobtrusive right column tower ad) is free.  Premium versions using your own domain name, without ads, with more space and bandwidth are available at modest cost.  The price is definitely right.

But the two things that make me love Ning are (a) the ease of customizing from appearance to layout to adding and configuring features to privacy, and (b) the speed.  Ning beats every other social networking community hands down for speed of loading and updating.  This is a community for the impatient man (and woman).

I just set up a social networking community, Bryant Gardens Network, for the cooperative where I live, literally in less than an hour.  Anyone who can use a word processor, email and a browser can be a Ning network administrator.

It’s so much fun, you’ll probably wind up building more than one!

The White Plains Press: A New Press Release Publisher

As a website producer, I have produced some clever websites, some that are elegant, even some that are artistic. But my claim to fame is that I produce websites that work.

My promise to each new client is that the website I make for them will help their organization grow, adding business, members, and prestige. That's a pretty tall order for a few bits and bytes in cyberspace.

Usually, "making it work" requires some marketing of the organization, often including press releases.

Until recently, I'd work up the press releases, send copies to the local newspapers, and "publish" it online using a press release service. Some of these services are nominally free -- and have a spotty record of success. Others, that work consistently, have a fee schedule that depends on speed, tracking, and promised distribution, etc.

Eventually, I realized that what the press release publishing services actually do is to make sure the major search engines, particularly Google, picked up and indexed the press releases I trusted to them.

But wait a minute. I don't need to pay someone to do that. I can do it myself with a little care and effort. And so the White Plains Press was born.

At the Press, you'll find press releases for local non-profits, like Bryant Gardens and the White Plains Council of Neighborhood Associations (WPCNA), for small businesses like Delmonte-Smelson Jewelers, Hudson Valley Energy Consultants (HVEC), and Balch Buyer's Realty, for upstate companies, like Bob & Sallie Connelly who do appraisals, auctions, sell antiques, and run an art gallery, for out of state organizations, like the Biz@Net Business Networking Group, and for local chapters of the American Society of Appraisers. And that's just in its first three weeks of operation.

Today, the White Plains Press is a useful (and successful) handmaiden to the Webshop@servenet.com. Tomorrow, well tomorrow the child could be feeding its parent.