I do there are a few wrinkles on this whole topic though.

There are obviously some business challenges (monetising content etc.) everyone needs to work through when it comes having web services “co-exist peacefully”.

And there’s something weird in this whole social networking area, in that quality of the back-end software seems totally unrelated to business success. So I don’t know how effective competing by writing high-quality back-end software will be.

However, the issue I really struggle with (which I didn’t talk about in the main blog entry) is the tension between people’s desire to create their own “small vertical worlds” (Ning) vs being part of single, large “horizontal worlds” (YouTube, MySpace, Flickr etc), and the benefits they get through that.

Specfically, it’s obvious to me how there are many and varied “network effect” benefits in the horizontal worlds. It’s not obvious to me that the same kind of benefits exist in separate vertical worlds.

Of course, just because *I* struggle with this issue doesn’t mean that it’s *really* an issue. I may just not understand something.

I guess the test of how strong these network effects are should be born out by popularity and growth rates of various types of services - vertical and horizontal…

With the added ability to customize it to your heart’s content, from the design and look and feel all the way into the underlying code (against a very rich set of web services API’s that we provide that make many social networking functions very easy to implement).

We think that MySpace and Facebook are great — they let you create and (in MySpace’s case) customize your profile page and connect to other people within their social network. But they don’t let you create your own social networks for anything.

We also think that Flickr, Youtube, and the like are great, but while they provide the ability to upload and share various media types, they also don’t let you create your own social network for anything.

I’d argue that these services will all coexist peacefully for a long time to come — in fact, Ning makes it very easy to embed content from Youtube, MySpace, and many other services within a Ning social network or profile page — and Ning makes it very easy to export information or content out to other services as well.

But in the long run, people opt for the services that give them the most freedom and flexibility to create their own worlds, as opposed to belonging to someone else’s world.

And that is our goal.

More important, you have control over the source code to implement or change anything you like/dislike, that kind of power you don’t see on many of the “best-of-breed”. Having full control over the code means that you can replace any aspect or feature that you find lacking in some way for a better option from a different supplier.

I don’t honestly think that people prefer to base their on-line communities around a single provider (although some in fact do).

People will prefer to base their on-line communities around the providers they choose and having the power to customize is essential for people to mashup the best services available, the starting set of features on a Ning social network is just that, a starting basic set, it is up to the network creator to replace/enhance/drop the building blocks that don’t fit their needs..

http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19225831.200-just-cant-get-enough.html

http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19225835.500-web-20-is-all-about-the-feelgood-factor.html

Myspace is a radio station from today as well,

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/28/orb_jacks_myspace/