Tag Archives: ning

by Brian Solis

Artists, musicians, and those representing them have access to an unprecedented infrastructure for communicating with influencers, fans, promoting and monetizing art, and also building communities – without the need for traditional labels and publishers.

While there’s much talk about Social Media, specifically Twitter, Ning, Facebook, and Myspace, consider the reality of the rapidly emerging landscape for mobile social networks and the overall platform supported by cell phone users worldwide. It’s only going to grow and eventually expand upwards right into the hot, ultra mobile computing category dominated by netbooks right now.

What’s the hottest phone +  mobile Web device right now? You guessed it, the iPhone.

With just over 1 billions apps downloaded, the iPhone represents a huge opportunity for artists to connect with fans while empowering them to act as ambassadors to those with whom the connect with IRL (in real life).

Good friend Paige Craig reached out to let me know about a company he recently invested in, Mobile Roadie. It is a platform for any band or musician to build and manage their own iPhone app, quickly and easily. In minutes, Mobile Roadie provides a powerful connection between artists and fans. The app provides a bridge to sell music, alert fans to about upcoming shows, and communicate directly with them. Plus, the app will help list the final product in Apple’s App Store for fans to download.

The app provides the ability to share music, pictures, videos, albums, and upcoming shows. Artists can stream music and link to iTunes. Fans can connect with each other with the integration of a fan wall.  Mobile Roadie also links outside profiles from within the custom application. It also provides stats to help analyze performance and opportunities to improve the design.

Building an app is usually expensive and arduous process. With Mobile Roadie, the distance between you and your iPhone-equipped iPhone brigade is only $399 to start and $29 per month thereafter. More details and answers are on the company’s FAQ page.

Connect with me on:
Twitter, FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Plaxo, Plurk, Identi.ca, BackType, or Facebook

by Michelle Lentz

It’s a day for numbers, I suppose. Earlier today, someone created the 1 millionth social network on Ning. Ning is the “build your own social network” site started by Marc Andreesen over two years ago. C|Net’s numbers state that “Ning has 22 million registered users, about 6.1 million of whom are considered active. Out of the million networks, about a fifth are currently active.” (I suspect people build networks as experiments, but don’t act on them.)

This makes me happy. Ning has made my life infinitely easier. I run a non-profit on the side and creating a social network on Ning was our best bet for a web site. It kept me from having to spend time coding and designing and instead, I could dive more into the content. Over the last year, our Ning site has improved because the offerings from Ning have improved as well. For my non-profit, I literally am running a mini-Facebook.

The same applies to the rather impressive Open Wine Consortium, of which I’m a member, and many of the other niche social networks on Ning. I love the way Ning allows people to gather together around a single subject. Alternatively, it also works as a basic web site for our family site – pulling in RSS feeds, photos, videos, and more. I’m debating on moving my main business web site to Ning, because the tech support is excellent and the features are better than what I could feasibly build on my own.

So congratulations to Ning – 1 million networks strong.

__

Contact Michelle with news, stories, events, and more.
Email: michelle[at]writetech[dot]net
Twitter: @writetechnology, Friendfeed: michellel
Sites: Write Technology, Wine-Girl.net