Ning News & Articles

Our terrible, terrible alliteration aside, Ning's (news, site) latest announcement is pretty exciting for its fans. Today's launch of Ning Apps grants users of the platform the ability to embed over 90 new applications and widgets on their social networks.

Installing and setting up a CMS might not be the most complex thing you'll ever do, but it's enough to cost many non-technical users a few chunks of hair. At DrupalCon Paris, Acquia (news, site) announced a new service that helps people create, configure, and launch a Drupal 7 site with relative ease.

Social media moves so fast, it's hard to keep up. Here are the week's top stories in scan-friendly format:

• RSS Dead, Twitter Done it?
• Twitter Search to Be Tweaked
• Ning Adds Applications To Social Platform
• Bit.ly Replaces TinyURL as Default Twitter Shortener
• Retailers Favoring Social Media vs. Search for Marketing

Social media are changing the way that businesses interact with the customers on a massive level. Not only have they changed the way of organizational interaction with customers, social media and social networks have brought new customer relationship management (CRM) opportunities, if done right.

While social media may be revolutionizing how businesses are able manage customer relationships. The problem is how to implement social media initiatives successfully in CRM on an enterprise level.

After MySpace came along and stole Friendster’s audience and spotlight, the next big shark to-be to join the pool was Facebook. Yes, the Social Media wars had officially begun. Naturally, after the birth of and bandwagon jumping between those three players, a social network platform boom happened, with products of all shapes and sizes. Today you can say: “I want a micro social network for my business” and we’d suggest Plum as the way to go.

You could even hint at how you’ve been itching for a network based on your creepy love for bellybutton lint and we’d tell you (gingerly) to go make one and bond with other lint lovers using Ning. And now, thanks to a Stockholm-based company called FileRide, you can even dream of social networks for inanimate things like the files on your computer, and we’d still be able to point you in the right direction.

Good for Google = good for the universe. What would a social network be without applications, you ask? Nowadays, probably obsolete; which is why the ambitious, sort-of-new social network Ning made a good move by announcing their support of Google’s OpenSocial v0.7 standard.

This will allow developers to easily build applications that can also be shared across a variety of other supporting social platforms.

Social network sites like MySpace and Facebook started an infectious desire from the public for more social-ness on the internet. The people were tired of chat rooms and IM just wasn’t cutting it. So the social network crazy started.

But MySpace and Facebook aren’t the only social networks out there…