Dave Briggs

Ning founder Marc Andreessen has posted a response to the discussions about the fact that quite a bit of Ning’s traffic is as a result of ‘adult’ communities. Ning, remember, is the service that allows you to create your own social network. Andreessen says:

First, we have built Ning to be a broad-based service — people can use Ning to create social networks and social experiences around any topic area they want and then contribute content and engage in any activity they want, as long as what they do is not illegal and fits within a pretty general set of terms of service…

Second, due to this inherent flexibility, some people have chosen to use Ning to create social networks and upload content around adult topics, including porn. It is true, there is porn on Ning…

Third, adult topics and content are a relatively small percentage of the total activity on Ning. We have various ways of quantifying this, and all of them show this to be the case.

However, my view is that I would now be much less likely to encourage someone to use Ning within the public or third sectors because of the heavy amount of adult content. I think that one of the key factors in encouraging people to engage with social media in a professional capacity is that it needs to be safe – and part of that is being free from association from undesirable content, like porn.

Ning is a great service, and could continue to be without the one-handed content!