Ning me!

I finally took the plunge today and joined Ning. I had been meaning to start experimenting with it for some time, but what with starting a new blog it seemed like it was time to stop postponing. For those of you who haven't heard of it, Ning is a site that lets you create your own private or public social networks. So... like LinkedIn, except more specialized, more private, and more conducive to holding conversations between members (for an article that tries to put Ning into the context of the social networking tools out there, check out this article by Dave Lefkow on ERE.

The site's got a nice look and feel to it. Signing up was fairly painless and I enjoyed tooling around to see what kinds of networks were out there. Finally, I tried setting up my own. With the exception of picture uploads not working very smoothly, I've had an easy time of it.

Why would you want to create a Ning network? John Sullivan talks about the need to start developing "talent pools." These are highly specialized groups of professionals in the same area of specialization. In my case, I decided to try and set up an alumni network of individuals who used to work for my company. I hope that it may become a sufficiently useful recruiting tool to attrack past employees back into the fold. Or maybe not. We'll see!