Nonprofit Tech: Do It Yourself Social Networking

Last last week, the one millionth site was created on the social network Ning. For individuals and organizations (including nonprofits) for whom Facebook is not giving them exactly what they need, there's Ning, which allows users to build their own social network.

Ning sites are created around a specific topic (nonprofits, cats, ninjas) and allows users to control the visual design and what features are available. Although a far cry from Facebook and it's 200 million users (that's more than the population of Japan or Brazil), Ning has 22 million registered users, about 6.1 million of whom are considered active. And out of the million Ning networks, a fifth or so are active.

For an example of how nonprofits are using Ning, take a look at the site of our friends at National CAPACD, the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development.

Ning is free, with ads. The premium version gets rid of that.