Mini-MySpaces
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Mini-MySpaces
New social-networking sites create communities catering to specific interests
JANUARY 29, 2007
Shawn Hesketh was looking to create an online meeting place for student artists in the Houston area when he discovered Ning.com.
Mr. Hesketh wanted to build a site that would encourage interaction among the participants in his Culture Shapers program, which organizes an annual art contest for local high-school students. Ning.com, owned by Ning Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif., provided the tools he needed. The site allows people to create their own social-networking Web sites.
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"I checked them out and fell in love right away," says Mr. Hesketh. "We had our site developed and launched within 30 minutes."
Culture Shaper's Ning site received 175,000 visits in the first month after its launch in early October, as Mr. Hesketh posted the winning entries for the program's most recent art contest. Since then, some 1,500 users have set up their own pages on the site to post art, critique other works or hold discussions.
Amid the explosive growth of giant social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, Ning and other sites are offering new ways for people to connect online. These sites offer more-focused interaction on a smaller scale, from social networking built around shared interests to family or friends planning a get-together.
And they give users more control over the experience than bigger sites do. "We really want to take a back seat toward the whole thing and really empower people to create something of their own," says Ning co-founder and Chief Executive Gina Biachini.
Keeping In Touch
Ning.com allows users to easily set up three different kinds of sites -- a social-networking site, a photo-sharing site and a video site. (The typical Web site that people have been able to build for years doesn't allow multiple users to upload items and interact with each other the way the sites prepared by Ning do, though such a site can be set up with knowledge of complex coding techniques.)
The creator of a group site on Ning.com can change the way it looks by scrolling through different templates to choose the color scheme, font and other layout details. Users can make their group site as open or as private as they want.
Getting It Together
- What's New: Several Web sites are offering new ways for people to connect online.
- The Background: Users can create their own social-networking sites, or use online programs to share calendars, documents or spreadsheets.
- What It Means: More-focused interaction on a smaller scale than the giant social-networking sites.
The Culture Shapers site was so successful that Mr. Hesketh decided to create a video group dedicated to a sister program, a singing competition called Young Voices of Houston. Mr. Hesketh expects both sites to attract young local artists for at least the four years they are in high school, and possibly beyond. "What we're expecting is that the kids will continue to use this site to keep in touch," he says.
There is no charge for creating a group, but Ning.com charges for services like added storage. Culture Shapers pays $30 a month for additional storage and for the right to run ads on its site, a move that Mr. Hesketh says has more than paid for its costs.
Kyle Ford created a group on Ning.com dedicated to Libertyville High School's class of 1996, in preparation for its reunion last November. Members of the class posted profiles and photos on the site and were able to contact each other through the site ahead of the reunion.
Hani Khalil, an alumnus of the Chicago-area school, found it a useful tool. At the reunion, he says, "people I hadn't spoken to in 10 years were striking conversations with me on topics they wouldn't have known about if they hadn't read my profile." He still regularly checks the site, to get in touch with people he couldn't talk to at the reunion.
Groups built around a reunion or other event may come and go, but overall, Ning's popularity is growing. Ms. Biachini, the co-founder, says the site's page views are increasing at a rate of about 50% a month.
The potentially ephemeral nature of many self-created online groups is part of the attraction, suggests Joe Kraus, the founder of JotSpot, a social-networking site that was recently acquired by Google Inc. "One of the cool things about these Web tools is you don't have to make a personal investment," says Mr. Kraus. "Being able to set something up and tear it down is a benefit."
Google last spring began offering people a way to connect online through its Calendar application. Users can share a calendar to help plan an event. For instance, widely scattered family members can organize a get-together by plotting on a common calendar everything from location and time to who brings what. When one person fills in information on the calendar, everyone in the invited group can see what's written.
Users can also view each other's calendars, with permission, or layer another person's calendar on top of their own. Calendars can be viewed by the day, week or month, and can be printed out. They can also be set up to send out alerts via email or as text messages to cellular phones.
One limitation of Google's Calendar is that all communication has to be placed on a calendar grid, so the program isn't ideal for sharing information that isn't tied to a date or a timetable. But in October, Google launched its Docs & Spreadsheets application, which allows people to create and alter shared documents and spreadsheets. So, for example, a book group could create an online list of members' proposals for future reading; the list could be updated or comments could be inserted by anyone in the group, for all to see. All changes are marked to show when they were made and who made them.
Aden Bliss, a financial analyst for WestEd, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that promotes education and student development, is a so-called trusted tester of Google applications, serving as a guinea pig for new features. Mr. Bliss, who isn't paid by Google to test the features, says he uses Docs & Spreadsheets to share a monthly chart of housing expenses with his roommates.
All the Google applications are free.
Getting a Life
Some social networks are growing up around event-listing sites.
Andrew Baio is a co-founder of Upcoming.org, a site that compiles listings of coming events in various cities. The listings are created by users, who post events as they hear about them. Users also can post their profiles on the site, along with comments and photos. Networks of friends can check each other's profiles to see who is interested in which events.
Mr. Baio started the site in 2003, and in its early days it included pages for Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose, Calif., as well as general pages for the 50 states. From there, the site grew on its own as users posted events in 133 countries. The site lists thousands of events, but users can filter them by checking recommendations from friends or by searching for unique interests. It also has a list of the most popular events by city.
Upcoming.org's rapid expansion drew the interest of Yahoo Inc., which acquired the site in October 2005. Yahoo declined to say how many people are using the site, but it said the number of users has tripled from a year ago and the number of events on the site doubles every six months.
Justin Foster started using Upcoming.org to find shows featuring techno and house music in the San Francisco area. The 34-year-old Web designer kept seeing the same people at these events, and eventually used the Web site to connect with them. "The nice thing is the listings, but the group dynamic makes it much more valuable," says Mr. Foster.
A similar site, HeyLetsGo.com, was launched in September with a focus on Boston-area activities and has expanded into New York and San Francisco. Like Upcoming.org, it offers a list of local events and allows people to post their profiles and discuss the listed activities.
Roughly 130,000 people have visited the site, and there are more than 15,000 registered members in Boston, says HeyLetsGo Inc. Chief Executive Evan Schumacher. The number of registered users is growing by about 40% each month, he says.
Mr. Schumacher says HeyLetsGo targets people who are looking for a social site with a real-life connection. "This isn't about spending hours a day on the Web site," he says. "It's about checking in it and getting out. We want to help people expand their social life."
—Mr. Cheng is a reporter for Dow Jones Newswires in Jersey City, N.J.
Write to Roger Cheng at roger.cheng@dowjones.com
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