Comments on: MU vs NING for Community Building

By: doris

doris — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 23:59:32 +0000

Nice post Roni. Thanks for sharing your experience.

By: اناشيد

اناشيد — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:06:47 +0000

I’m off to take a look at some of the links here. Nice post Roni. Thanks for sharing your experience.

By: Patrick Brunt

Patrick Brunt — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 03:45:04 +0000

Absolutely. Overcoming the issues specified above are tedious and sometimes require specific skills. I do agree with your first statement and thank your for your very informative post.In all this was an excellent post and I sure am impressed with this blog, i’ll come back again and again to check for updates.Regards,Patrick Brunt,http://www.seov2.com

By: Shawn K. Castille

Shawn K. Castille — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:05:21 +0000

Ning has some cool features but there are some downsides that can be problematic for a business owner.

When new features or system wide issues occur on the Ning platform the Entire network is often down (Including Ning.com sometimes) and your social network will display a “Join Ning Create Your Community Today”

At first glance this may not seem like a big issue but if you are concern about branding this issue that often occurs on Ning can become a hazard for your business by exposing your Hosting service leaving your clients & potential customers confused to say the least.

Also, Ning is not the most SEO Google friendly platform for content management. I had my Ning network for months and i could not get my Blog post to be index properly by Google for life of me. I noticed only links to blog post on my home page when Google crawled got index in the search engine.

Besides that, Ning is ok if you can push traffic over yourself but don’t depend on Google being your savior especially if you have a Private Social Network that requires Members join before viewing your content.

http:///www.makemoneyonlinesafely.com

By: Matt Jones

Matt Jones — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:15:59 +0000

Ning is great but customization is a problem. I recently launched one with premium features called Network Airsoft. I have several ways to monetize it which I will implement in the future.

By: LHenry

LHenry — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 22:29:31 +0000

Great post, I actually posted my own blog series about Ning, and creating your own Ning Network as I’ve found so many people having questions about starting a network of their own.
http://ilhenry.com/sistasense

By: Sam Stevens

Sam Stevens — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 04:51:48 +0000

KickApps also deserves consideration.

By: healthynerd

healthynerd — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:29:01 +0000

The only drawback that is keeping me from choosing Ning is the commission cut. It’s too HUGE as well, Jake. Frankly, once you’ve made a name for yourself like Roni, and have established a significant number of people in your community, it would not be a good move to maintain your site in a third-party platform like Ning. Now, the question is, how easy is the migration?

By: Jake Rutter

Jake Rutter — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 19:32:29 +0000

I have recently taken another look at Ning and they have come a long way since I last checked them out about 2 years ago. The level of customization that they offer their user is huge! The tools there are much better than WP, dont get me wrong I LOVE WP, but the MU version just isnt there yet. The only thing that might come close is BuddyPress.

By: Sam Stevens

Sam Stevens — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 16:27:15 +0000

Here's a new social network platform I was just reading about: soceeo.

By: Cathy Moore

Cathy Moore — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:57:22 +0000

A challenge I’ve had as a Ning user is that it’s very hard to keep track of posts in forums. I can’t tell what I’ve read and what I haven’t, and the RSS feed for forum posts hasn’t been much help for me.

By: Del Sauzo

Del Sauzo — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:44:46 +0000

I’m off to take a look at some of the links here. Nice post Roni. Thanks for sharing your experience.

By: MJ Ray

MJ Ray — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 13:13:26 +0000

I can’t remember whether it was Ning or Xing which I refused to sign up to because it had poor accessibility (don’t use IE or Firefox with all the trimmings? Then go away, kid) and an IMO-abusive doorstep-sized terms of service which dictated copyright licensing terms of anything people posted there.

Anyway, I’m surprised accessibility and terms of service don’t appear in the comparison.

By: Roni

Roni — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:09:19 +0000

Callum – That would be too steep for a little start up like me but for established business trying to build a network around a campaign, I can see it being viable.

healthynerd – We are only comparing MY to NING because this article is based on my experience. I’d love to hear about other networks and how they compare. please!

By: healthynerd

healthynerd — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 07:02:47 +0000

Hey, roni, wait up, why are we only comparing MU and Ning? Have we extensively researched on which social networking platform is best on the market? Have you tried searching for open source ones besides MU?

What about Elgg? or Dolphin? or AroundMe? What about you guys? Did I miss anything better?

Thanks, Roni for sharing your insight!

By: Callum

Callum — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 03:00:16 +0000

Roni, nice article, good comparison.

I think Ning makes sense if you want to unload the support / server maintenance / etc headache. I maintain a WPMU install professionally, and there is quite a lot of work involved. It’s not like the famous 2 step WordPress install.

I’d say Ning is also very competitively priced. $43 a month for your own domain, your own ads, and an extra chunk of disk / bandwidth. I guess the downside is the lack of integration with your own site. Plus, if you wish to move away from Ning at some point in the future, I’m pretty sure you can’t just export your data and start somewhere else.

I’m considering offering a hosted WordPress MU / buddyPress product. It would include all the updates, the plugins updated, themes updated, etc. It would cost a minimum of $500 a month though. Anyone think there would be a market for a product around that price?

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:46:30 +0000

I think it is difficult to compare Ning and WP-MU, especially without mentioning some of the many other CMSs available. Ning to me sounds pretty expensive if you want to run it on your own domain with ads.

I compared some of the other options available on my blog:
http://www.retireyoungandwealthy.com/options-for-creating-your-own-social-network/

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:20:20 +0000

I was managing communication for my African drumming group on my blog, and the demands of people went beyond what I could maintain given time constraints.

I chose Ning for ease of use to users more than anything, as we had a variety of backgrounds, and most are not tech-savvy.

Choosing a social network platform requires you to consider the level of your users, and as my network supports users that interract physically as well as virtually, Ning was an ideal solution.

We manually approve all membership to try and avoid spam. :)

http://drumstuff.ning.com

By: AK

AK — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:22:58 +0000

Joomla is also a noteworthy community building platform. The plugins are quite cool!

By: Roni

Roni — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:21:46 +0000

maureen – YES it gave up a ton of headaches with giving the hosting up to NING. I was afraid of how my dinky hosting was going to handle any more members on MU.

Nico Granelli – Agreed it is a con of NING. However having an already an established relationship with a CPM network I knew I would cover the expenses within 3 months if my traffic held.

As for the links, sorry guys, I wasn’t sure if Darren was going want or to stick them in… here you go….

http://mu.wordpress.org/
http://www.ning.com/

Gary Jones – Great Question! I’m really not sure as I haven’t reached that point yet.

WPblogger – I Haven’t – DARN! That may have solved many of my problems!! lol

MoneyNing – The sense of community is strong and not everyone is looking for a monetizing blog, they just want to be heard.

Ben – Thanks for the feedback. Writing is not my strongest talent. I’m hoping the clarify the table with Darren. Sorry about that.

Strong One – THANKS