Ning Shots 2.0
Ning is getting ready to push a major upgrade, which will bring them outta beta. It has a new User Interface (nice) and a more robust platform. More upgrades are coming, but I did get my dirty paws on some screenshots, in case you are interested.
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I made my first one yesterday: http://citroenbattle.ning.com
Have to admit, it was pretty fun and easy to do. I think Ning is a great concept
Oops, meant to link it: citroen battle
Took about 15 minutes.
It seems to me one of the major features of any Web 2.0 site is the offer to win any of the cool Apple products. Mostly an iPod or more recently a MacBookPro.
Will someone please tell Om that even though these display screens are pretty – what’s missing is the UI as to how one actually builds a Ning – thingie.
And if it’s still with php – well then all of Micahel Arrington’s criticisms still stand.
Having pretty wrapper pages does not solve the UI creation connondrum. It’s quite a challenge to come up with an end-user paradigm and tool that can do all of what Ning claims – without being a coder.
Om: Thanks for the vote of confidence! There’s a lot more to this release than just a new design, but it is particularly lovely, isn’t it?
Marc: All the Ning-thingies have a customisation UI out of the box. When Ning comes back up (we’re down for the big changeover right now) take a look at http://reviewit.ning.com/ – it was that app which I cloned to create http://zerobars.ning.com/ . It took me less than five minutes and I didn’t have to write a line of code. The app-building happens in the setup process after you clone it. You can’t use it to create something wildly different to its basic framework without extra programming, but if you want you create a collaborative Google Maps mashup with your own custom data, it’s way ahead of everything else out there right now. And that’s just one of our apps.
You can do a ton of stuff on Ning without touching PHP. There’s a lot of whizziness that we’re working on for future releases, some of which Michael alluded to. Most of it is not in this release – we have several more releases scheduled down the line (and plan to continue thus forevermore). But Ning is already plenty useful right now.