A friend of mine noticed a need for better communication and coordination in a group we are participating in. We all use the internet all the time and there were several tools that came to my mind that we might use to address this need. None of them really felt like the elegant solution.
Then he built us a Ning site. In literally 15 minutes, with the help of Ning.com, he built us own own, custom, private social network.
I started exploring our new site and in the process, had the inspiration to create custom social networks for several other projects I am involved in. I created two more Ning networks, with the added bonus of a single profile that works in all three.
This has me thinking about my clients with lower budgets trying to amplify their web presence. I am already a big fan of customizing wordpress for small business websites, capitalizing on the smooth content management capabilities. Adding Ning into the mix gives big budget functionality to small budget projects. This is a good thing for me 🙂