Ning on the rise

My social networking mission continues. Back in early May I commented that I thought "Facebook remains a time sink, good for tracking the antics of family and friends. No real relevance to B2B media and information. The LinkedIn network is impressive although I'm not quite sure about the crowding of new features onto the home page. Plaxo's Pulse is coming fast up in the outside lane...". My basic opinions on those don't change much although I'm not sure if Plaxo won't run out of puff before the final furlong.

The interesting development of the last month has been the emergence of a lot more activity on several quite relevant Ning-based micro-networks. These are designed to allow special interest groups to set up their own mini-Facebooks which have a much more independent look and feel than a Facebook (or now LinkedIn) group.

So far, I'm keeping track of three:

• Event Crowd - a UK-based network for the events industry created by Simon Burton of Exposure Event Creations. I joined in January. It was quiet for a while, but appears to be picking up now with new members I've noticed from Asia and elsewhere in Europe. There are 758 members.
  
• American Business Media - this was set up a month or so ago by the association in the US and already has some 453 members.
• Folio: mediaPRO - storming along though and very interesting is Folio magazine's new Ning site. Set up only a week or so ago, this already has 1,261 members from all over the world. It's already much more international than the magazine itself which is very US-centric. As you can see from the URL, they've hidden the Ning antecedents a bit more carefully than the other two. They have actively promoted the creation of Groups on various special interest topics. There's one on B2B with over 100 members and I set up an International group yesterday. It will be interesting to see what sort of activity is generated.