« Cleantech | Main | Can a public company CEO really be this stupid? »
ning raises BIG round - $44 million!
wow. this just in from marc andreesen's blog. says that ning has raised $44m and (according to techcrunch) at a $214m post money valuation. there is clearly a lot more to that story than any of us realize.
i do wonder, however, what marc's strategy is given that he is one of the biggest believers in facebook becoming the new platform for social media innovation. anyone have any thoughts or insights?
July 9, 2007 | Permalink
Comments
Could they be attempting to take an alternative route to becoming a "platform for social media innovation"?
Similar goal to Facebook, but approaching it differently... rather than providing a contained community for social media innovation on top of a platform, could they be creating a platform for social media innovation that spans an unconstrained community?
Posted by: Fraser | Jul 10, 2007 2:58:10 PM
I think they're more likely building a pipe for "social apps", or as Facebook likes to call itself today "social utility".
But I think all these concepts are flawed.
There's water (content, user-generated or otherwise), there's pipes (social network, cable stations, etc) and there's water pump machines (automation to drive content home).
Ning focuses on water pumps built by the users, Yahoo focuses on the water, Facebook focuses on the pipes.
Pipes are utility already, user-generated content is for free, the trick is to build the better pumps. (and you won't get the best pumps out of user-generated pumps)
Google... Google know better.
(in the meantime I keep myself busy building better pumps at home :-)
Posted by: vruz | Jul 11, 2007 8:46:40 PM
i think marc believes that all sites will become social networks. His site is a website creator and host. Think geocities 2.0. Ning helps people build sites that have a social twist. Sure beats Google pages. Any thoughts?
Posted by: Andrew | Jul 17, 2007 1:46:19 PM
if every site has a social network component (provided by ning), then he eventually realizes the idea of being that social platform.
Posted by: Fraser | Jul 18, 2007 8:14:38 AM
is Ning a publicly traded company?
Posted by: chad | Jul 26, 2007 6:36:30 AM
