Ning… really worth that much?

With all of the funding talk of Ning in the blogosphere and FastCompany, I thought that they would be a good topic for this week’s blog post.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but from my brief use of the Ning site… I’m not finding their platform too compelling.

Maybe I’m spoiled by Facebook… or trained is a better word… I can’t help but look for features on Ning that I’m used to on Facebook. Or maybe it’s the style/functionality of Facebook that I’m looking for. I get this odd feeling that Ning is simply aiming for quantity over quality. It’s true that the site was established as a platform for people to create their own social networking site. Although it might be unfair to compare Ning with a SNS like Facebook feature-wise, they are competing time-wise with users already invested in other SNSs.

Ning provides the social networking tools that are used on popular SNSs. Features like, Videos, Photos, Blogs, Groups, Events, Forums, An Activity Section (a News Feed ala Facebook), and Member List. Sure you’ve got all of the ingredients to make a Social Networking Site work… but I haven’t found an individual SNS compelling enough for me to join on Ning.

So that’s what worries me most about Ning. Let’s start out with the look, or the lack of consistency in Ning’s look. Everything from the banner on the top of a Ning SNS, the color scheme, the layout/order of all the modules (Video, Photo etc…) is different (this is both good and bad). There are some more well done than others, but it really just boils down to a bunch of content on one page, which is overwhelming to me and I’m assuming many other users. The one consistent feature, is the navigation bar on the top of the SNS starting with Community, My Page and so on. So there is a freedom to create a specific look for your SNS, but that freedom allows for sloppy, over saturated home/community pages for a SNS created on Ning. I’d prefer the initial page on a Ning SNS to be clean, less cluttered, easy to navigate, and concise. When it’s easy to throw things together and call it a SNS, the end result may not be so compelling.

But I could just be taking the idea of Ning the wrong way… it sure is allowing for the long tail of SNSs. This is a good and a bad thing. Good because any interest, niche, hobby, etc… can be made into a SNS of sorts. Maybe not as in depth as Facebook or MySpace, but with all of the components that constitute a SNS will be present. I think a SNS needs to be compelling, and have quality content for users of its site that are passionate for the particular niche the Ning SNS is trying to fill. The sheer volume of different SNS variations on Ning are mind numbing, and will continue to grow. Whether or not the Ning approach proves effective will be something to watch for… but call me pessimistic when I say that it will be hard to convince users of larger SNS to find/create their niche on Ning and continue using it. There is something too generic/stale about Ning that I think will never go away… and that will keep each individual Ning SNS from getting a fully invested userbase. Oh… and I’m curious as to what Ning’s business model will be to monetize their create your own SNS platform, besides online advertising…

Dash Express. Hype or Game Changer?

Imagine an Internet connected navigation device. A lot of cell phones come with built in GPS modules/mapping software (Google Maps). These may be able to access the internet and show the traffic for particular roads. Now that personal GPS units are either built into the car or as a portable unit, personalized navigation is becoming ubiquitous. But without real time traffic conditions, especially in heavy metropolitan areas, navigation can be a bit troublesome and not as convenient as it can be. Yes there are also GPS units that also have real time traffic as reported from different traffic organizations (Ex. Sigalert), but most users would probably value a real time poll of information from people who were actually driving those roads. Wouldn’t it be more efficient and valuable if the information came from the drivers themselves? For instance, you have a friend who is driving on the freeway or street that you’re going to drive on, and you were wondering what the driving conditions were like. Normally you would call that person, and they can tell you how fast they’re going, what the traffic is like, etc… from their experience. You then (at least in Los Angeles) plan your route accordingly… take the 405 instead of the 5, or the 60 instead of the 10, or just avoid the freeway and take the side-streets.

This is where the Dash Express comes in, a combination of GPS, and online community type features. Being connected to the internet provides a two-way connection pipe for the device to communicate with servers on the Dash Network. The main feature of the device is to report back speed and location information back to the Dash Network (both passively and anonymously) so that other users of the device can use that data to provide current and average traffic information over time for specific freeways, and streets. A device can theoretically provide the best route (of shortest distance, and the least amount of traffic based on the data collected from other users) to get to your destination quickly and easily. There are a couple things to be skeptical about with this feature. One, it will only be as good as the amount of dash users in the area you are driving, as the pool of information gets larger, the better the traffic data. It will be interesting to see how much data will actually be needed to get a good sample of information for accurate traffic reporting. Two, the company is not only charging a premium for the device itself, but a monthly fee to use the service. Without paying a monthly fee, the Internet connected features, like real time traffic, will be disabled. There is definitely a high entry cost for this device, and it will be interesting to see if people will be willing to pay a premium to access this information. There are plenty of other features, gas price lookup when you search for nearby gas stations, and a web portal for your device so that you can send and share information with the Dash Express from any computer that has access to the Internet. Lists of destinations, addresses, and more can be distributed to your own and other Dash Express devices owned by other people (your friends maybe?). The key here is that they need to get the device out to as many people as possible, and I think down the line they will realize that they need to severely discount the device itself and try to make the money back through the subscription model, or keep the purchase price high, but take out the subscription fees altogether. Something needs to be done to get the device and/or the technology to more users (licensing software/network to other manufacturers… imagine buying a car with compatibility to the Dash Network). The Dash Network will improve as the user base becomes larger. This definitely sounds like a game changer, but we must wait and see… It’ll be great to see if this idea actually starts to take off.

This is interesting… it looks like some users on Amazon.com think there might be a buzz campaign to help promote the product. It may be true but a device as new and innovative as this needs to have a good word of mouth campaign to help get the technology in the hands of more users. The more the better for this device.

Chat Room Comeback?

So earlier today, I found an article on the New York Times entitled “Online Chat, as Inspired by Real Chat“.

The article begins with this quote

Compared with other forms of human interaction, online social networking is really not all that social.

It is true, online social networking is simply not as good as face to face social networking. There will be no replacement for the FtF communication that can only be imitated online to a certain extent.

The author presents the following analogy to online social networking on popular SNSs

People visit each other’s MySpace pages and Facebook profiles at various hours of the day, posting messages and sending e-mail back and forth across the digital void. It’s like an endless party where everybody shows up at a different time and slaps a yellow Post-it note on the refrigerator.

It’s true, most of the communication done on popular SNSs is asynchronous, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a bad thing. I think there is a reason why chat rooms have not reached a massive popularity amongst internet users since the days of AOL’s prime. For one, most chat rooms can become very overwhelming with several conversations between several groups people at once, in the same chat room. Let me put it this way, have you ever sat in a small room with more than a few groups of people, with several conversations going on at the same time? Not only is it hard to hear the person you’re talking to (as they try to raise their voice over the other conversations in the room), you might become distracted with the current conversation as you listen in on the other conversation. This is the dilemma that online chat rooms face if they adopt the same simple text based model.

There is promise in the use of chat rooms besides being just a chat room embedded on your Facebook/MySpace profile. For example, imagine watching a TV show on Hulu, or a clip on YouTube (both are streams that usually asynchronous/not live), but inviting your friends online to watch the show with you. Instead of everyone watching asynchronously, the show is synchronized to start and playback at the same time as each user is connected to the stream. As the show or clip goes on, the viewing experience becomes shared and comments/links/reactions can be distributed within a chat room that is overlaid or positioned alongside the video stream. This is analogous to sitting in your living room watching TV with your friends, or even watching a live TV show while chatting with your friends via IM.

Another idea I have deals with proximity. What if there was a way to filter conversations depending on your interest or location? This might be hard to understand so I’ll provide a brief example. What about a dynamic chat room that followed your browsing and reading habits online in a specific website (not the entire web, just one particular site)? Let’s take ESPN.com for example. You start off by looking at the front page, and your chat room is currently loaded into the Top Stories arena, but then you navigate to the NCAA Basketball home page and then your chat room dynamically shifts to a different room whose primary focus is with College Basketball. The conversations are moderated to make sure topics continue to be relevant, as well as being linked to your friends who may be browsing the same section on the site. Imagine discovering that your friends are also looking at the NBA Standings, a conversation can be triggered as each person debates why their team isn’t number 1.

So yes, chat rooms can make a comeback… so long as their implementation is more than just a 3-d avatar embedded in a web browser, or a chat box with no dynamic functionality.