Ning.com

After messing around on Ning.com for a while, I must say that I'm surprised that this is my first time even hearing of the site. It appears to be extremely useful for both concentrated and extended social networking. What sets Ning apart from sites like Facebook and Myspace is the option for specific purposes. People can create any type of network on Ning and be reasonably assured that the people in their network care about the subject matter at hand. This is not especially true for Facebook groups, for example, where people will join anything and everything with little to no consideration.

I was intrigued by the option of free networks and paid networks. Obviously, free networks will have bare-minimum features, but they are probably all you really need. It would be interesting to see what kinds of things you can do in a paid network, though. It might be possible to create a true, active organization on Ning. I don't know enough to fully comment on this, though.