Small is beautiful

You’ve probably read here that I’m giving Ning a whirl as host of the Internet Time Community.

In late February ‘07, Mike Arrington had this to say about Ning in Telecrunch:

Ning relaunches tonight with new functionality and an interface that allows even the most novice of web users to create their own highly customized social network in moments. The site has been down most of the day - the new stuff should be online around 10 pm PST.

Even before today’s launch, Ning CEO Gina Bianchini says growth has been strong and steady. Nearly 30,000 applications have been created to date, up from less than 5,000 a year ago. Page views have been spiking, reaching 20 million per month, 20x traffic a year ago. Unique visitors have reached nearly 5 million per month as well, 10x a year ago.

The company remains privately financed, mostly from Marc Andreessen, who’s put $9 million or so into Ning to date. The company has 27 employees and is headquartered in Palo Alto.

Three dozen people have signed up for the Internet Time Community thus far. One of them wrote that he was unclear about who owns the content. I said I’d check. I fired off an email at 8:45 pm. Here’s the news:

Twelve minutes later I received a reply from Gina Bianchini, Ning’s co-founder and CEO. Twelve minutes.

Gina assured me “Members own the content that they contribute, you own the network that you create.”