Ning.com
Jul 17th, 2007 by John Setzler
L.P. Frans Stadium on 7/16/2007 - Hickory, North Carolina
I was browsing a friend’s blog yesterday when I came across his article about a rather new concept in social networking. I have dabbled a little myself in this concept with accounts on FaceBook and MySpace. Both of those sites don’t really interest me much at all. My friends network isn’t large enough to need an online website to keep up with them. What does interest me is online communities where specific and common interests are the themes. I particularly enjoy photography related communities. FaceBook and MySpace don’t lend themselves well to this concept. Those communities seem to be dominated by the high school and younger generations. It’s all about bling and me, neither of which interest an old fart like me very much. After I read Jason’s article, I decided to go check it out to see what they had to offer.
After playing around on the site a little, I made one determination. Ning.com offers a very advanced version of Yahoo, Google, and MSN Groups. These three giants all offer free group sites where people can get together and collaborate on whatever issue is at hand. The feature set on most of those seems lacking though, especially for photography-related themes. As I explored more, I decided to create a network of my own.
This will be a bit of an experiment over time probably. I don’t know how many photographers in North Carolina are interested in a networking site, or if there will even be enough activity to make it worthwhile. The site allows users to post photos, so photo discussion could be interesting. The network is very configurable. I have created several discussion forums where specific topics may be discussed. I can expand that if I want to, or trim it down.
If you are a photographer in North Carolina, you may want to give it a try!