Diego,

Unfortunately, I am one of those people who thinks there are problems with Ning. There are ease of use and flexibility stains but those can be polished away with committment and focus over time. No problem there.

The real problem is what I would describe as "community of ghost town builders." Creative individuals find their way to Ning Town and build 'social apps'. There are many of them out there. But what happens after an app is finished, it just sits there waiting for visitors like a ghost town. Where will the traffic and use come from?

And once in a while a social app will take off like a rocket. But success and demand for new features will eventually force the builder into hiring developers to rewriting the social app from scratch using custom tools.

So the picture I have in mind when I think of Ning is a bustling desert filled with ghost towns. Once in a long while, a town shoots up into the sky and disappears.

Ning needs to think about ways to bring more traffic to new Ning apps. Ning also needs to think about ways to keep successful Ning apps tethered. There are several ways to meet both goals so I am not giving up on Ning yet. Hope you guys make it.

Don, thanks for the comment. Obviously I disagree. :) Here are my reasons for that.

There's a number of implicit assumptions in what you're saying, which kind of lead you to your conclusions.

Assumption #1 is that only certain people would find their way into Ning with ideas to build apps. Why can't *anyone* build their own app? We hope to make that a reality.

Assumption #2 is that every app is either a friendster with millions of users or nothing at all. But social apps can also be useful for small groups: your friends, your family, your group at work or school. An app doesn't have to have terabytes of content or a ton of users to be useful to someone.

Put assumption #1 together with #2 and you get the situation you describe, but we see the reverse in both: lots of users who will create apps for their own use and that of their own groups, all cross-connecting in various ways to help you discover new content, new friends, etc.

Of course there will also be apps that spike or take off, and for those we want to provide a platform that will allow them to remain at ning, no matter what scale they have to deal with.

Finally, yes, we will do a better job of flowing traffic to ning apps, and of showcasing the stuff that's built on ning -- sites like those I pointed to here http://www.dynamicobjects.com/d2r/archives/003322.html are not that easy to find yet. We'll get there though!