Minerva Shelved

In the news now there is a lot of buzz about one of last year’s Web 2.0 Award Winners. Ning, based in Palo Alto, CA, came in second place in the Mashups and More category. Founded by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini, Ning lets people create their own social networking sites. Apparently, many were unimpressed with the first incarnation of Ning, but this week saw the launch of Ning 2.0, and last year’s critics are lauding the new product.

Your social network can include blogs, discussion forums, video clips or audio podcasts. See the Ning group for American Idol. Plus it’s open source, so if you see a design on another Ning page, you can clone it for your own use.

How is this different from MySpace, you ask?

Sites like MySpace offer Web users individual profile pages they can use to connect to friends, but typically keep control of the underlying network, including advertising sales.

By contrast, users within each Ning network can select the latest Web features for watching videos online, creating a photo slideshow, listening to music or publishing a blog. Members have far greater flexibility over the look of their personal profile pages, buddy lists and site color schemes.

“Other social network sites ask you to join their world. We are about people creating their own worlds,” said Ning Chief Executive Gina Bianchini, who co-founded Ning with Andreessen. (from PC Magazine)

There are plenty of uses this new DIY web can have for libraries. I’ve always dreamed of an OPAC that has for each work a link saying, “Would you like to start/join a discussion for this book?” (If there’s a library that already has this functionality, please let me know.) Now, instead of librarians creating these pages for a select few books, there would be the potential for as many groups as there are volumes in the library’s collection. The link would take you directly to the Ning network for that book or, if you’re the first to start a group, the link could take you to a tutorial on how to start your own book discussion group.

Academic libraries could use it for course reading lists. A group’s page for Robert Frost would include his poems, podcasts of Frost reading his work, video clips of interviews with Frost, and lectures given by scholars. I’d be interested to hear of any libraries using Ning to create social networks.

Tim Spalding of LibraryThing has already created a social network on Ning for people who make or are interested in social cataloging sites called SocialCatalogers (that man does NOT like to hit that spacebar). So far the group has 25 members. Read more about his reasons for starting this group here.

Perhaps for the next Web 2.0 Awards, Ning will come in first place.