Ning Adds Fresh Face to Social Networking

Remember when the Internet was AOL, CompuServe and Prodigy? Your parents probably still think it is. Marc Andreessen, however, knew the Internet was much more than the one-size-fits-all offering. The Web browser, or more specifically Andreessen's Netscape Navigator, changed that.

Fast-forward to today's Web 2.0 and think of the current one-size-fits-all social networks: Facebook and MySpace. Gina Bianchini, CEO of Ning, believes she has a solution for today's problem by allowing anyone to build their own social network with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) tools to customize it as they wish.

This is not Bianchini's first company. In 2000, she launched Harmonic Communications, which helped marketing and advertising agencies track, measure and optimize their online and offline spending. Before she sold her company to Japanese advertising agency Dentsu in 2003, Bianchini, 36, approached Andreessen, 37, with her idea for Ning. Andreessen, having already changed the Internet once, believed in the idea. The two co-founded Ning in 2004 and launched the Ning platform in 2007.

"Our fundamental philosophy is that people have many different facets of themselves," says Bianchini. "The model we believe in is most closely mirroring what people do in the real world in their daily lives."

Essentially, why join a network to connect to everyone, when you can hyper-niche your networks for the various aspects of your life? If you like celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis and are an organ-transplant candidate, you may not want to mix those circles. Fortunately, social networks have been created on Ning for both those groups. Furthermore, users sign in once and are able to bounce from one network to the next -- no more "walled gardens."