On Ning, social apps are created by you and by us. They run in a free Playground designed to make easy things easier and hard things possible.
From the FAQ :
“Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for people to build and run social applications. Social “apps” are web applications that enable anyone to match, transact, and communicate with other people.
Our goal with Ning is to see what happens when you open things up and make it easy to create, share, and discover new social apps. These might include for any city, your own take on Craigslist…for any passion, your own take on Match.com…for any interest, your own take on Zagat…for any event, your own take on Flickr…for any school, your own take on the Facebook…for any topic, your own take on del.icio.us…for any mammal, your own take on Hot or Not or Kitten War.
You choose the app, decide for whom it’s most relevant, create the categories, define the features, choose the language – or just clone an app that’s already up and running on Ning – and be on your way.”
- App creation tools – including the ability to view the source code or clone any app on the Ning Playground
- App management, hosting, and security
- Example Apps you can clone and run in minutes
- User registration, user profile and role management
- Tag creation, display, and management as a built-in service for every app
- Navigation and search
On Ning, you can either develop an app from scratch by viewing the source code of other running apps to get ideas, or by cloning any running app and modifying it in any way you’d like. You can do this easily by clicking through any View Source or Clone This App link on the Ning Sidebar found on the right 225 pixels of any app.
When you clone an app, you clone the source code of the app from which you came. Your new app works the same as the original, only now you own it and can modify it in any way that you want – run it “as is” or apply it to a new location, interest, topic, or language.
In return for all this, you open any code you contribute to the Playground to serve as an inspiration for other developers and refrain from running third party ads. That’s pretty much the trade.
For those of you who know what the heck is meant by these, we also offer:
- A secure PHP sandbox and developer file system (we’ll also add support for other scripting languages like Ruby and Python shortly).
- A scalable and flexible semi-structured content store
- Internal and external XML-based APIs and output
- JSP/JSTL-compatible markup
- A URL command line API for auto-generation of user pages and RSS and Atom feeds
- Open cross-app content sharing
Check out [Ning] & read some thoughts about it on [TechDirt]