Ning Me: Great Social Networking Website Building Platform

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Yesterday, I started experimenting with Ning, and I was impressed. It’s amazingly powerful for such an truly easy-to-use system. Now, (no kidding) virtually anyone with an ounce of web-savvy can create their own social networking website. This is Web 2.0 at it’s best. (Oh, and I should mention this company is backed in large part by Marc Andreesen.)

But why take my word for it, when Ning’s attractive and articulate CEO, Gina Bianchini is virtually right here to demo it for you:

Thanks to TechCrunch for their review and you may also gain further illumination from GigaOM’s post.

Online Video Monetization Blooming

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If you still don’t believe that there’s money to be made, not to mention good marketing buzz to be generated, with online video clips, then you better check out The New York Times coverage of the competition between video sites to make revenue sharing deals with producers and talent who can develop a following using online video. They call it, New Hot Properties: YouTube Celebrities.

Web 2.0 Illuminated by Neat Video

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Great video illuminating Web 2.0. Thanks, Kanas State U. 😉

OR a higher-quality WMV version of this video is available here.

Enjoy.

Google Apps Offers New Lowcost Website, Email Strategy for Small Businesses

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There are many ways to look at the launch of Google’s new Apps platform, but for me, it looks like a pretty cool and very low cost ($50/year/user) way for a small business to do a web site without traditional hosting, and with a bunch of neat features.

Because it supports direct domain (as well as sub-domain) hosting and includes integrated e-mail as well as a bunch of features (from Google Page Creator for creating web pages to calendars and other forms of collaboration), it’s quite powerful. More info here specifically for small businesses.

I think the biggest challenge will be having small businesses understand the scope of what’s being offered.

On the other hand, the bigger business story for larger enterprises and the broader IT market is that Google is Challenging Microsoft (NYTimes) with a service that offers email and more for $50/user vs $225/user annually using Office and Exchange.

Online Video Explosion Signposts

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One nice thing about the online video explosion, revolution, or whatever you want to call it, is that it does have signposts. (FYI, I’m still waiting for some professional publisher to ask me to write more about all this… hello?!).

But meanwhile here are a couple of recent articles and/or posts that I found to be of interest and encouraging re: the re-emergence of my own “video-video” enterprises (videos about video and online communications) which are percolating in the background:

> VideoEgg Hits 3 Million Uploads — TechCrunch insights on the growth of this online video leader vis a vis GooTube (Google-YouTube) who may have the best ad platform of the moment. I said “may.”

> All The World’s a Stage (That Includes the Internet) — NYTimes writer Scott Kirsner offers a nice overview with examples of how user-generated content can and is making money, at least for a few leading edge folks.

Apple’s Steve Jobs Reopens Free Digital Rights Conversation

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Ever since the early days of the Internet and the original Napster MP3 download craze, the issue of digital rights management (DRM) and the security of the intellectual property rights of artists vs the new environment of sharing and collaboration offered by the Internet has been a controversial subject.

For example, I wrote a kind of inflamatory piece in Videography in the year 2000 called “Napster Gets It, Universal Doesn’t” where I called the Universal CEO “Bozo Bronfman” and referenced a classic Flash movie “Napster Bad” which made fun of the band Metallica for being money grubbers.

Bottom line, the bad guys were the record companies, and now (fast forward to 2007), they are among Steve Jobs and Apple’s best friends.

So the latest is that Mr. Jobs, always on the move, and in the face of the huge financial benefits that Apple gains by owning the platform that delivers by far the most “legal” (read digital rights protected) downloads… and in the face of mostly European gripes about Apple’s DRM and its proprietary system (which is not unlike Microsoft’s, Sony’s etc.), Mr. Jobs has now written a lucid web post encouraging record companies to open up their digital rights.

In other words, he’s once again pointing the finger (accurately) at the record companies as the reason that there is a digital rights lock down in the first place; and he’s recommending that the best way forward is for these same record companies to get out of the way, for the benefit of everyone, especially consumers but including the record companies and the tech companies as well.

DailyTech explains in more detail why “Apple’s leader believes that a DRM-free world would be the best one for consumers.”

If you’re interested in this subject (and, frankly, I think that everyone should be), I highly recommend Stanford Law professor and digital rights activist Lawrence Lessig‘s exceptionally well-written, researched and insightful book, Free Culture.

(Addendum: Bronfman responded to Jobs and it still looks like he’s a bozo.)

Online TV & Video: “social revolution” No Longer an Exaggeration

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Sighting a pressing TV industry need to monetize the “massive interest in online (video) content,” eMarketer.com summarized an Informa Telecoms & Media research report (which I could not find on their site) including numbers that would make almost any venture investor salivate. For example, “In the US alone, revenues are forecast to rise from $538 million in 2006 to nearly $4 billion in 2012.”

“These trends are now so pronounced, that the term ‘social revolution’ no longer seems too much of an exaggeration,” said Adam Thomas of Informa.

Personally, today, I was checking out VideoEgg.com which boasts an easy to use video upload, Flash compress, and, yes, video editing platform as well as a pretty impressive online video ad network that’s focused on social networking sites.

Does anyone have a good comparison of all these new Web 2.0 video platforms?

TechCruch seems to think that SplashCast may have the ultimate player platform.

I wish it was like the Videography days when I could get paid to research and write about this stuff. Who knows, if I can find a way to monetize it, maybe I’ll be doing some video clips soon. Potential channels would include internet marketing, online video, and the joy of golf. But should I do SplashCast channels, distribute via the VideoEggNetwork, BrightCove, all of the above, or what?!?