After recently publishing an analysis of the pros and cons of Ning 2.0 and 3.0 networks, it may be significant to reexamine 3.0.The company’s latest service has been on the market for several years now and many of the technical errors present within the first release have now been mitigated and are a thing of the past. For technology users seeking to develop and manage a social network, Ning 3.0 may be a solid option.
Blogs and Articles
Ning 3.0 has the capability for users and administrators to create and publish blogs and articles. However, it is important to remember that Ning possesses a unique content management system (CMS) that is not similar to WordPress. Therefore, all content that is published on Ning is only retrievable on their services and cannot be rendered on any other platform. Having the ability to import content to WordPress has become an industry standard and Ning has not yet provided this feature to its users.
Forums
Ning’s forum feature is one of the best on the service. It is accessible for publishing and managing user-generated content. It also notifies users when members make comments to their forum posts.
Groups
The groups feature also works extremely well. This may be a popular option as the groups features across all social networking platforms have become more popular over the last several years, especially on Facebook.
Photos and Videos
Users have the opportunity to upload images and embed videos (from sources like YouTube and Vimeo). These two features are likely to contain the majority of user-generated content on the social network.
New Themes
One of the most frequent criticisms of Ning 2.0 networks was that the design features were difficult to edit through HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Ning 3.0 has new themes that provide more design options for administrators (in much the same way as WordPress).
Monetization
Ning 2.0 only had the ability to display banner ads. Ning 3.0 also displays ads and has an e-commerce solution, paid access to content and subscriptions.
Should You Build a Community on Ning 3.0
If you’re looking to develop a social network with thousands of members then another platform may be the stronger option. However, if you’re managing a niche community, Ning 3.0 is a good service to use.
