by Brian Solis

Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini

TechCrunch reported the rumor, then Marc Andreessen confirmed it.

Ning has closed a Series C round of $44 million orchestrated by New York’s Allen and Company. Legg Mason led the round with other investors, including Andreessen adding to the pot. The previous two rounds were privately funded by Andreessen and a band of angels.

$44 million! The third round brings the company’s valuation to the tune of $214 million. That’s simply astounding. I guess other up-and-coming social networks can count on a future investment, even though I was sure we had hit a state of parity.

Ning is one of those rare oddities in Silicon Valley. The two-and-a-half year old startup is a bit Web 1.5 if you will as it was conceived back in 2004. What were you doing then? However, it wasn’t until last February, with the launch of its updated social platform, that the site finally earned notoriety.

Basically Ning is a do it yourself (DIY) social network. You can create a network around anything of relevance and cultivate your own community.

For example, our friends at Lunch 2.0 created a network for its community to network in and around events.

It’s fully customizable to mirror any design you wish to implement, with the final result mirroring the look and functionality of a vanilla social network. And, it’s members are moving north. Currently, Ning is host to just over 70,000 networks, which at current valuation, brings the price of each network to roughly $3,000. Keep in mind though, as more networks are created, that number goes down.

It seems as though the last trend of either not taking anything or only what you need, when you finally need it, has finally passed. Now it’s take what you can, as often as you can. Therefore, with every new funding announcement, the bar will be raised that much higher. And when Facebook and other tech companies start marching down the line of successful IPOs, then and only then, we will start to walk down the dangerous path of the dot-com boom and inevitably, the bust.

Let’s hope everyone remembers their history, otherwise we may be doomed to repeat it. In the meantime, let’s enjoy the ride.

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