markavey.com

I created a couple of Ning networks a couple of years back. There wasn't much activity over that period, but then, about a month ago, I started to get a few new members on one of them, so decided to give it another look.

If you've never heard of Ning, they're kind of a "DIY Facebook", i.e. a Social Network, but restricted to a topic of your choosing.

One of the best new features relevant to one of my networks (the Flight Simulator Network) is the video and screenshot/photo handling. The built-in player is excellent, as is the ability to add comments and ratings and the ability to embed the player on other sites. This functionality is so improved, I actually decided to shut down my existing screenshot/video site and move everything to my Ning network.

There are other new features, such as live chat, events, user blogs etc. Membership of my network has gone up from around 60 to over 350 in the past month or so and feedback from the members has been very positive.

The only negative aspect I can see is that it's not obvious to users where they should post new items. There are forums, and groups, which also contain their own forums. Each area also has it's own Wall, so there are multiple areas for people to post in. This is not a real issue, but it can make it a tad difficult to find newly posted items sometimes, although this is made easier by subscribing to the site's RSS feed.

On the whole, I'm very impressed by the improvements made over the past couple of years. They also offer Premium services, such as:

• Removal of ads (and inclusion of your own if you wish)
  
• Mapping to your own domain
  
• Premium support
  
• Additional storage
  

All of these come at a price, but the free (ad supported) version is extremely good.

If you looked in the past and weren't that impressed, give them another try. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.