As a company based in the heart of the tech industry in California, it can be easy to lose sight of how Ning as a product is used worldwide. We recently announced Ning’s official launch in Germany, and with 100,000 Ning communities, and a new community created every 10 minutes, we wanted to take a step back and do a round-up of Ning communities from around the world we think are stellar:

We also highlight some amazing communities on the Ning homepage for our various markets:

Germany (Deutsch)
United Kingdom (English)
Canada (English)
France (Français)
Brazil (Português)

Have a Ning community that should be on our list? Let us know about it!

Not too long ago, we laid the groundwork for our member categories feature by streamlining the management of your existing and prospective members. This feature is now live and we wanted to share with you the details and how it works.

Categories
You can create up to 50 categories and assign members to them. All of your members will begin in the default category, called “Members.” You can create and edit new categories via the Member Categories tab in the Member Management section. A couple of important limitations to note: the default category can’t be edited, and members can only belong to one category at a time.

Listings
When you create a category, you have an option to create a listing page exclusively for the members in that category, and you can create listing pages for up to 10 categories. When you do this, a new submenu item for the category will appear in the submenu items for Member pages. You can choose the text for the submenu listing, so that you can pluralize or customize it. This is a great way to highlight specific members within your community.

Image and Text Badges
Each category that you create can also have an optional image or text badge that gets added as an overlay on a member’s profile picture. Whether you create badges of honor or badges of shame, this is an excellent way to identify admins, reward special members, or just make it easy for visitors to identify different types of members. Text badges are based on the category name, and can be placed at the top or bottom of the profile picture. You can set the text color, background color, and the background opacity for each badge, so you can get as creative as you like!

Images badges can be positioned in one of the four corners of a member’s profile picture. We’ve included over 20 badges to get you started, and you can upload and manage up to 50 of your own custom badges!

CSS Tricks
Designers and Ning Creators comfortable with CSS will be pleased to know that each category made is associated with a CSS class added to the #xg_themebody div in profile pages. This means you can create CSS styles that will be applied to the profile pages of members in a category. This will let you do things like adjust the background or color scheme of every member of your network who’s in a specific category.

Messaging
Once you’ve assigned your members to categories, you can use new functionality in the Broadcast Message feature to send a broadcast message to just those members. Choose any category you’ve created and proceed from there.

Let us know how you’re using member categories and badges within your community!

©2010 Obert Houser

In March 2007, we started TuDiabetes because we saw that too many people with diabetes were feeling isolated instead of benefiting from the shared experience they could have by connecting to other people touched by diabetes.

Today, Diabetes Hands Foundation‘s networks allow members to find support locally and globally. Our more than 23,000 members describe the TuDiabetes family as a lifeline, a source of guidance, a sanctuary, and even a college education! We proudly connect advocates, artists, dreamers, thinkers, and people touched by diabetes of all types so that all of us may live a more expansive life with diabetes.

I sit back and reflect on where we were 5 years ago and where we are now:

• I have learned to stay flexible, both about my diabetes (not pretending to be perfect) and in the way we do things on TuDiabetes and the Diabetes Hands Foundation (adapting to changing circumstances, challenges, and signals along the way).
• I am more hopeful than ever: I have had the opportunity to talk with (and share the conversations on video) with some of the world’s most brilliant minds working to make our lives better and one day have diabetes be a thing of the past.
• I have witnessed the power of social media beyond socializing: seeing how connected people touched by diabetes now feel better understood and more empowered. Who would have imagined this when MySpace was the big thing?

On our fifth birthday, please help us keep going strong in our mission to improve the lives of people living with diabetes worldwide.

If all members of TuDiabetes donate $5, we will raise more than $100,000. Our goal is less ambitious: we are seeking to raise $20,000 before the end of March. So we ask you to give us 5 dollars, or more if you can.

Thank you for your support! And here’s to another 5 years!

-Manny

Do you remember the anxiety and stress of the college admissions process? Many questions loom: When will I find out? Is this the right school for me? How can I hear from current students? How can I afford this education? What will my life be like there?

These are just some of the questions top of mind for high school seniors (and parents) as they wait to hear from schools and decide where to attend for the next chapter in their lives. This got us thinking. How are colleges and universities using Ning to build community around their prospective students and what are schools doing to make a student’s decision on matriculation more informed and less stressful?

We came across Providence College’s Ning Network, PC Perspectives. Based in Rhode Island, Providence College (PC) is a small liberal arts college that decided to build their community with Ning to supplement their presence on Facebook and Twitter. Their goal was to share a true PC student-perspective to high schoolers. “We wanted prospective students to have a space to learn about PC that was a step beyond the packaged marketing materials,” said Scott Seseske, PC’s Assistant Dean of Admission. “We wanted a place where these students could come and hear from PC students, and ask them questions directly.”

The Ning community is completely open, meaning that anyone can see student blog posts, photos and profiles by PC’s student ambassadors (pictured below). Current students highlight everything from study abroad opportunities, roommates, sports, picking a major and their impending graduation. In total, PC Perspectives has 10 dedicated students representing the college on a regular basis through the community (and many more chiming in along the way).

Ambassadors offer their candid experiences at PC to the nearly 10,000 students applying each year. Seseske highlights that for student ambassadors, many contribute because the Ning community made an impact on them during their own college searches, and they’re paying it forward by volunteering their time within the site. Having a presence within the community also serves as a tangible portfolio as student ambassadors think about their graduation from PC and post-college employment opportunities in fields like the press and media, tech, education, advertising, and writing.

Since the group is open to everyone, PC Perspectives serves to help high school students at any stage in the admissions process — meaning that if someone wants to join as a member, and gush about how excited they are to attend PC, they can absolutely do so, or if they’re more comfortable checking out what PC is all about without becoming a full-fledged member of the site, they can do that too. By being a destination where prospective students can visit online, connect with other high schoolers, current students and the college, PC Perspectives offers students just that: an authentic perspective on what it’s like to attend Providence College. And more importantly, they’re helping high school students find the right school.

Hobbies. Whether knitting, collecting stamps, running, enjoying a good bottle of wine or indulging in foodie culture, we all have something adding layers to what makes us, well, us. And what tops a hobby? Making a business out of it.

At Ning, our team is fascinated with how we can provide you with the best social technology weaving together people with the things that you hold near and dear to your heart — no matter the hobby, business, topic or focus. One way we do this is by speaking directly with our customers about what’s worked for them, and the ways they’re leveraging Ning to turn their passions and hobbies into hyper-focused communities populated with people sharing their same excitement.

We recently spoke with filmmaker and Ning Creator, Zack Coffman about Choppertown Nation, the Ning Network he spun out after the wild success of his documentaries about custom motorcycles built from the ground up, and the people making the custom bikes.

  Directors Scott Di Lalla (left) and Zack Coffman at the Sundance Film Festival (2007)

 

Co-directed with Scott Di Lalla, the first of their documentaries came out in 2005, with follow-up documentaries released almost every year thereafter. With the films generating a worldwide cult following, Coffman’s Ning community, Choppertown Nation, began about 3 years ago under the premise that it would be neat to have a place where the fans could have a hub to celebrate the documentaries and their excitement for building custom rides. “We had a lot of friends on our MySpace and Facebook pages,” said Coffman. “And we thought, we ought to make a network with our own brand and title. We wanted pure, constant, and consistent branding with our own site.” Coffman chose to use Ning to build the community, and with that, Choppertown Nation was born.

Since its launch, nearly 4,000 people have joined Choppertown Nation, and the site has seen over 50,000 images of custom bikes uploaded directly by its members. With such a bevy of content, the result has been a lot of interested eyeballs checking out what’s being said and made by the greater community, and Coffman has leveraged the site as a way to authentically promote DVD sales for his other films. “We’re able to advertise in an organic way by offering members and visitors our DVDs and other items they’d probably like to buy. In many ways, what we’re selling is just a natural extension of what they’re already enjoying on the community.”

Building on top of a stream of great content and engaged members, Coffman also regularly offers contests and competitions to the community. In Choppertown’s latest competition, wrapping up at the end of this month, members can upload 2 pictures of their bike builds and tell everyone about what they’ve built. Top contributors have the opportunity to win apparel, accessories and other prizes from industry-known sponsors like Biltwell, Dickies, Licks Custom Cycles, Baker Drivetrain and DicE Magazine. Contests like this provide an endless loop for engagement and friendly competition, while bringing sponsors front and center to an already-active and influential biker community.

Coffman also cites that SEO (search engine optimization), where a website appears in search results like on Google and Yahoo!, remains high for his sites given that his community lives on the Ning Platform. By linking between his Ning community and his online store, this helps his business come up higher in search results as cross-linking between the sites builds relevancy for his brand. In turn, this helps as people search sites like Google for information about building custom motorcycles to come across Choppertown Nation and its online store.

For Choppertown Nation, which started out as a hobby turned documentary series turned full-fledged community combining a business, it’s a shining example for how a Ning customer is creatively and naturally driving engagement and increasing visibility on the web. As a phrase motor enthusiasts know well, we’re glad to see that the Choppertown community and Coffman live by the mantra “Run what you brung,” all day, everyday.

Have you turned your hobby into a business using Ning? Tell us your story — we’d love to hear about it.

Last year, we did something a little different than we have in previous years; we published a public Product Roadmap. It was a big success. It bolstered direct customer-company communication, and it really helped Ning Creators know what was coming next.

It was an ambitious roadmap, and by year’s end we had finished all but one of the projects we initially listed on the roadmap (we’re still working on Mobile improvements; it expanded in scope and became larger). All told, we completed many more projects in 2011 than we did in the 2 previous years combined. In fact, we actually added additional projects to the 2011 Roadmap as the year went along, making it our biggest year of improvements ever. All of those additional projects were based directly on the suggestions we received from our customers — thank you!

We’re going to keep up regular roadmap updates for 2012, although this year we’re going to do things a little differently. We’re still going to keep you updated about what we’re working on with our Product Roadmap page on Creators, but we’re going to shift to offering a more “living” document that shows:

1. What’s already in partial release
2. What we’re working on now that’s not yet released
3. What’s still in the planning stages

The goal is to update it frequently as we go along instead of offering one giant laundry list of features. We want the projects we’re reporting on to be focused on high quality — incorporating feedback we hear from our customers so we can be nimble and adjust what we’re building based on your valuable input. And, we’ll be adding to our roadmap as we complete projects throughout the year.

With all of that said, here’s what we have partially released, are working on, and are still planning…

Partially Released

Activity Feed: If you haven’t seen it yet, we also recently added “Top News” as a beta in the Ning Labs section of your Dashboard. Among other things, this feed pulls in Facebook and Twitter account posts into the Top News activity feed. We’ll be making additional visual improvements to this feed, implementing some real-time abilities for new activity items, and moving this feature out of beta. Check out the latest set of improvements we recently released. There’s more to come on this project that will help increase engagement on your Ning Network.

Member Categories & Badges: We know a lot of Ning Creators want to create different levels of membership for their community. We’ll be adding the ability for you to assign members to custom-made categories. The work on this project kicked off a few weeks ago with a reorganization of the member roles and moderation data to make finding and filtering members easier. Next, we’ll roll out the ability to create and administer categories in this area. This project will also include a way for you to create custom badges using these new member categories. This will be an excellent way for you to reward or identify admins, featured members, special people and all-stars on your community.

Working On It

Mobile Update: Not everyone is aware that there’s a mobile version of every Ning Network — it’s located at networkname.ning.com/m. If you are aware of it, you’ll be very happy to hear that we’re working on a redesign of this mobile interface that will be a giant improvement. This is one of the largest projects we’ve undertaken to date, and it’s really important. We want to get it right so that Ning Creators won’t just have a better mobile experience to offer their members, but will have a way to configure and customize the mobile version to really fit their community. We’ll be posting about this on Ning Creators and accepting volunteers for the beta group.

Help Center Redesign: Our Advocacy team is most excited about their revamp of the Help Center. It’s time for a refresh of the content, the look, the advice — all of it is currently in the process of being redone to be more friendly. Let us know if there are specific resources you’d like to see in our updated Help Center.

Planning it

Blog Update: The blog functionality on Ning Networks is ready for a redo. We’ve gotten a wealth of feedback from Ning Creators about what they’d like to see done differently with the blog feature. We have a lot of work planned to make the blog more powerful and much more visually appealing. We’ll share more details as this project unfolds.

Sign-Up Controls: We’ll offer expanded control over sign in and sign up options that will allow you to, for example, have an “open registration” during specific times and “closed registration” at other times. If you’re more interested in using Ning as a publishing platform over a community platform, you will be able to turn off all “Sign-Up” links and messaging visible to non-signed-in visitors.

New Commenting Options: Provide the ability to allow non-members to join in the conversation by using third-party commenting services (e.g., Facebook comments).

How we move forward

One thing we want to do is invest more resources in beta testing and iterating on the design of each new feature — very similar to what we did with the recently updated Chat. We started the complete Chat revamp with an early announcement about the feature, followed by the creation of a small test group, gradually opened up the beta to more people, announced our progress ahead of final deployment, and then rolled the feature out to everyone. It was one of our most successful product launches, and it incorporated a lot of opportunity for the most engaged Ning Creators to provide feedback. Being laser-focused on one project at a time (rather than being more generally focused on a giant list of projects) helped us make Chat even better than we had originally planned. We’d like to pattern more of our releases in a similar way.

We still plan to innovate in a big way, and, as always, there is additional work going on that’s not reflected in this product roadmap. For example, it may not be apparent that over the past year we greatly expanded language support for our marketing pages (Ning traverse le monde! FYI: We’ll be re-translating French and German soon), reorganized and consolidated domains, adopted new behind-the-scenes web services that make things run more smoothly, and many other projects. We continue to grow and become stronger as a platform when we do these types of essential, less visible projects. Building out all facets of our business — and not just the forward-facing product features — means a more reliable and robust product.

We’ll be continuing the conversation on Ning Creators and the Ning Blog about these projects, so look for ongoing announcements about beta access and updates on our progress. If you didn’t find your favorite request in this update, we’ll be updating the roadmap regularly with new items. As always, thank you for all of the suggestions and feedback!

In January, I was asked to go back to my alma mater, Colgate University, to speak to students about what it’s like to work in the social media space. Before I dive into the details, I’ll take a step back and say that much like many of the communities built on Ning today, Colgate is a close-knit and hyper-passionate community of people, so the chance to share my story and experiences working at Ning and Glam Media was something I couldn’t pass up.

Sian-Pierre Regis of Swagger New York (left) and Jason Rand, Ning & Glam Media. ©2012 Colgate University / Andrew M. Daddio.

A number of alumni also speaking at Colgate work in the social media and community-building space, and I wanted to hear their perspectives on creating and managing successful communities — something that’s definitely on the minds of Ning Creators and Glam Publishers. Sian-Pierre Regis, a classmate of mine, has created a media empire through his street lifestyle site, Swagger New York. Swagger introduces readers to the people, the music and the trends that are hot in New York. And they’re expanding to cover everything from news to fashion to technology to culture. Coincidentally, Swagger is also a Glam Publisher, meaning that premium brand advertisers can reach Swagger’s trendsetting community in authentic and engaging ways.

I also met with Matt Hames, Colgate’s Manager of Media Communications. His job entails managing Colgate’s digital presence and reaching out to people to showcase Colgate’s offerings as a nationally-renowned learning institute. He’s also an avid competitive curler, and leads a private Ning Network for the sport.

For all intents and purposes, Matt and Sian-Pierre are community managers at the helm of building recognition for a brand. For Matt, it’s Colgate University, and for Sian-Pierre it’s Swagger New York. More generally, they’re focused on bringing people together to share their excitement for something. This is the exact thing we see our Glam Publishers and Ning Creators doing everyday. Given their leadership, I asked Sian-Pierre and Matt to discuss their approach in building successful communities, and the things they’re doing to yield engagement, lively conversation, and valuable and impactful relationships.

How have you gone about building successful online communities?

Sian-Pierre: I have a very strong vision for the brand, and have always maintained that if the brand came off as cool, smart, different and YOUNG that Gen-Y’ers would stick by us. And they have. Through our Facebook channel specifically we have an intimate relationship with over 125k people, writing back to them when they comment, liking their posts and genuinely showing an interest in their personalities, loves, dislikes, etc. We’ve been able to get brand evangelists who have reblogged us or hyped us up with international press outlets, etc. We even used three of our fans in a GILT Man campaign, so our followers feel like they are actually a part of something bigger.

Matt: The first step is to decide what value the product or service can offer in return. It can simply be “getting people who are fans of this” into one place. Or it can be the exchange of ideas. There needs to be a thing that people get out of joining the community.

What was your uh-huh moment that an online community was not only important, but necessary?

Matt: Unlike a marketing campaign designed to get people to think a certain way about a brand, a community can be harnessed to continually learn about fans and members. Part focus group, part evangelists, this is the first time brands can give back to their best customers while giving them a voice.

What advice do you have for community organizers looking to get started?

Sian-Pierre: No one’s watching you when you start. So just start. And then build every day until you’ve got your identity…and then ATTACK.

Matt: Try to learn what your best customers/supporters want or like. They will be the beginning of your community. Learn from them. Also, they self-identify as fans. Try to let them as far inside as possible. Show them the making of TV spots. Give them access to important people.

How are you measuring success?

Sian-Pierre: Up until this point, I measured success in visual quality of the brand, press mentions, all the more superficial stuff. Now, it’s engagement, and website traffic. The fact is, if your fans and members aren’t engaged then your brand isn’t really marketable.

Matt: Good question: we’re setting some initial goals on the Facebook page. One is to attract more current students, so we’ll compare that age group’s growth in stats.

Measurement starts with specific goals. Attract more students to Facebook. Use Google+ to attract more international students. Get people who come to Colgate.edu to engage in social media.

Facebook fans and Twitter followers are important – what’s the next step beyond getting these likes and followers?

Sian-Pierre: Taking them off Facebook and Twitter and having them live on your own site.

Matt: Involve them. Most other advertising (for example, Super Bowl TV spots) tries to entertain people. Social media needs to involve people in the inner workings of the brand or organization. Let them see as far under the hood as possible.

How do you weave all the conversations together happening across the web about your brand?

Sian-Pierre: We try and interweave all the conversations together by referencing what’s happening on our other channels and driving people between where we have a presence.

Matt: First listen. Find out where people are and what they are saying and get involved.

How do you reward your community or active individuals contributing?

Matt: People like stuff. But more importantly, they like an inside look at stuff.

How do you keep people engaged and coming back to your community?

Sian-Pierre: Showing up every day, giving them what they tell us they want through their comments, and building the community with their guidance.

Matt: Work at giving them a reason to come back. Content. Think about the goals – who you want to attract and why you want to attract them. If you can answer that, you will have an idea how to engage them.

I like to think about the community in real life. If all those people were standing in a room, what would I tell them? How would I get them talking? How often will I talk?

Then, I do what I can to plan what I’ll say.

At Ning, we’ve long believed in giving you and your members the flexibility to share and converse with one another in whatever means is optimal for your community – and today we’re launching a major upgrade to one of our most popular features: Chat.

We’ve rebuilt the new Chat from the ground-up, meaning we took a fine-toothed comb at how Chat should work with your 2012 expectations of web technology. The new Chat is made using HTML5, expanding the speed, options and customizations available to you through the feature. HTML5 also means that the new Chat is also now available on iPad and iPhone, Android-powered devices, and many of the newer mobile platforms available today.

Besides the updates we’ve made under the hood, we’ve also improved the readability as you use Chat. We’ve consolidated on white space, meaning you’ll see more of the conversation without the need to scroll through the past. Posts are grouped together, and appear under the same timestamp, name and avatar. After 1 minute of inactivity, we’ll add a new timestamp, so that you’ll know when the conversation left off and picked up again.

We’ve also added more controls and customizations with Chat. Its appearance will match the standard font used on your Ning Network, and Chat also adopts your network’s color scheme. Much in the same way you can use the Language Editor to make tweaks and customize the language across your Ning Network, you can do the same with the new Chat. Appearance customizations are now available for Chat with CSS. You now also have a universal and easy way to toggle Chat’s notification sounds on or off, and even a way to upload your own sound to be used to notify you and members of new Chat activity.

There are 4 new and improved displays for Chat: bar, module, full page and pop-out, giving you and your members the ability to easily show and hide chat messages according to individual preferences. With the updated new Chat bar, we also now support a new and improved pop-out chat, which will allow Chat to be ever-present even as you and your members navigate around your Ning Network and the web.

You no longer have to toggle between the network-wide chat and one-on-one chats. Now, when a one-on-one chat is started, a new private window will open up and you’ll be up and running in a private chat. You can pop-out the private chat or let it stay in the Chat bar.

As the Ning Creator, an admin or a chat moderator, you’ll see an “x” next to any chat post. You’ll be able to delete the post, and temporarily suspend the member from Chat. A member’s suspension from Chat can range from 15 minutes to 24 hours – it’s up to you. You and your members can also choose to ignore chat posts by specific members. This means that you won’t receive private messages and posts by anyone you’ve ignored, even in the Main Room.

Want to know more? Check out our new Ning Help Center articles that explain all the details about the new Chat:

• Introduction to Chat
• Get to Know the Chat Bar
• Control the Display Options for Your Chat Feature
• Moderate Chat on Your Ning Network
• View the Online Members in Chat

We’d like to thank all of the beta-testing Ning Creators who gave the new Chat a whirl and provided us with great feedback as we iterated this new feature. We’ll continue to take feedback from you and would love to know what you think. Feel free to comment below or on this Creators group. Happy chatting!

We’re writing as a company today to express our concerns with a couple legislative bills currently being debated in Congress (the “Protect IP Act” and the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA). Much has been written, many have opposed, but the beat goes on. We think this kind of legislation is a big deal that doesn’t come around often. Here’s why:

As background, these bills would give the US government and private individuals additional enforcement tools to combat websites that may be engaged in copyright infringement or counterfeiting. The goal is clearly well meaning—online infringement is a serious issue that demands serious enforcement. As with many things, however, the devil is in how the goal will be accomplished. In summary, court orders can be sought against any website (wherever located) that is believed to be engaging in online infringement. If an order issues, payment providers and advertising networks can be barred from doing business with the site, search engines must stop returning results for the site and domain name servers would need to blacklist access to the site’s domain name.

Even after Congressional revision last month, the current bills remain extremely broad. Legitimate websites can be put on an “American blacklist” without warning or an opportunity to defend themselves (whether that blacklist would even be effective at stopping traffic to an offending site is a whole other issue). A single complaint could trigger a blacklist, with the burden of proof on that website to get itself unblocked. This could lead to unprecedented monitoring of websites, subject to individual judgment (read: censorship). Here at Ning, we don’t think our Network Creators should be subjected to that kind of policy.

This would be a radical restructuring of Internet law. Oodles of unproductive and time-consuming litigation would arise to challenge and interpret the bills. We think it’s necessary to have a careful, broad-based debate on more targeted and effective measures for combating online IP infringement.

Here’s what you can do: Learn more, join the fight. Contact your Representative or Senator and tell them to oppose these bills. These bills are being debated again when Congress returns to session in late January. Or just use the power of social media—you can make a difference.

I’m excited to announce that we have completed our merger with Glam. As of today, Ning is officially part of the Glam Media family!

We’ve release more than 35 major new features in the last year alone, and we have some major enhancements in the works — including an all-new Chat and continued updates to the popular Activity Feed. We’re hard at work on a bunch of new features that we’ll share with you in an updated product roadmap blog post later this month. If you’re a Network Creator who is interested in becoming part of the Glam Media Network, you can find out more about how to apply for that here. For all of our customers who have been following our progress from milestone to milestone, you can expect your Ning service to continue unchanged — and you can continue to expect us to build out exciting new features to help you get the most out of your Ning Network.

You can read the press release here.