Ning (website)
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 Screenshot of www
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| Type of business | Subsidiary |
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Type of site
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Social networking service, Community building platform |
| Available in | Multilingual |
| Founded | Palo Alto, California (2004) |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California, U.S. |
| Area served | Worldwide |
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| Revenue | US$30.0 million (2011 est.) |
| Employees | <50 (2014) |
| Parent | Mode Media Corporation |
| Slogan(s) | The World's Largest Platform for Creating Social Websites |
| Website | www |
| Alexa rank |
 1,634 (November 2015[update]) |
| Launched | October, 2005 |
| Current status | Online |
Ning is an online platform for people and organizations to create custom social networks, launched in October 2005. Ning offers customers the ability to create a community website with a customized appearance and feel; feature sets such as photos, videos, forums and blogs; and support for “Like”, plus integration with Facebook, Twitter, Google and Yahoo!. Ning, Inc. is owned by Mode Media.
Ning was co-founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini. By June 2011 there were over 90,000 social websites running on the Ning Platform.
Ning started development in October 2004 and launched its platform publicly in October 2005.
At its launch, Ning was a free-form platform for the development and hosting of open-source "social applications." The source code for Ning applications was available to users, and the service made it easy for anyone to fork a Ning application, modify its PHP code and run it as their own. Applications included photo albums, blogging software, and many for sharing business reviews. In late September 2006, Ning narrowed its focus to offering a group website, a photos website, and a videos website for people to copy and use for any purpose. These three templates were later superseded by a single customizable application aimed at enabling anyone to easily create their own social network.
Ning was initially funded internally by Bianchini, Andreessen and angel investors. In July 2007, Ning raised US$44 million in venture capital, led by Legg Mason. In 2008 and 2009, the company announced it had raised an additional US$75 million in capital.
On April 15, 2010, CEO Jason Rosenthal announced changes at Ning. The free service would be suspended and of the current 167 employees, only 98 would remain. Current users of the free service had the option to either upgrade to a paid account or transition their content from Ning. For a time, Ning had its headquarters in Facebook's old office space. Once purchased by Mode Media, Ning moved to its headquarters.
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