When I returned home to California a year later, I started using Yahoo! Messenger to keep in touch with friends and family, and make some new friends as well. Over the years I've joined many online communities, message boards, and other social networking sites on many different topics, and funneled all of that activity to my page on MySpace. Now, I keep up with my family and friends on MySpace, and discuss topics of interest with online acquaintances on Yahoo! and all the other social networking sites that I've stayed with over the years such as iVillage, Google, and Tribe. Recently, I began to blog here on Blogger as a way to voice my opinions about the topics that I am most passionate about. As my blogs have evolved this past month, they have begun to receive the attention of readers worldwide, and I have made a big effort to enhance my blogs and make them their best.
In order to take things to the next level for my social network and blogging voice I signed up with a website called Ning - and I think that Ning is the next big thing!
Ning is a website that allows you to create your OWN social networking website on any topic that interests you. You can add forums, groups, photos, videos, RSS feeds, third party widgets and more to your site on Ning, and visitors can become a member of your online community for free. There is no cost to set up a social network on Ning, and you can upgrade your membership to a paid membership to get additional features for your social networking site. The templates provided by Ning are very professional and easy to customize. For example, the most recent community that I created on Ning is a community for world travelers called "The Experienced Traveler" and can be found at http://experiencedtraveler.ning.com. I was able to add an image to the header of my choosing, and coordinate the website colors to match as you can see below:
Ning also creates a community badge for each social networking site that you make for members to display on their own websites, blogs, and pages.
You can customize your community badge to coordinate with your site and also add a custom image as well. There are three types of badges that a member can use such as the badges below:
View my page on The Experienced Traveler
Visit The Experienced Traveler
Ning is very easy to use and has a similar design function to Blogger.
You can select the page elements of your liking to add to your social networking site, and can arrange them on the page the way that you like as well. What I like best about Ning, is that you can add third party widgets to your site such as Google Gadgets and site tools. You can create a truly valuable resource with a Ning social site! Plus when you sign up for an online community with Ning, you can use your Ning ID to sign up for all social networking communities created on Ning. Plus, you can make announcements and post updates on your community in the Latest Activity section, including announcements of the newest members and more. These announcements and posts are even available as an RSS feed so that you can syndicate your community's news across the internet.
Ning is catching on in a big way with some 'small' communities boasting thousands of members!
You can find social networking communities on a wide variety of topics, and the best are usually found on the homepage under Ning Spotlight. I created a community for each of the blogs that I have, so feel free to join any that are of an interest to you.
Visit Online Socialite Community
Visit Women Fashion Beauty Community
Visit Story Time Online Community
Visit Lesbian Mommy Community
Visit So Cal Work at Home Mom Community
Visit Wellness is Wholeness Community
Visit Spiritual Apostle Community
Visit Picture Found Community
Visit Search Freely Community
Feel free to post the link to your Ning community in the comments below if you have one!
The communities on Ning are great for meeting other people with similar interests, or for creating a site for your own personal social network. With all of the other social networking sites online, don't you think it's about time you had your own? If you do, be sure to visit Ning.com and create your own online community today! Thank you for reading this post and I'll see you online sometime soon.
About the Author: Julie Phineas is a work at home mom of 2 who lives in Southern California. You can find out more and view her photos by visiting her page on MySpace.
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