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Ning certainly continues to rock and roll, at least according to data released by the company and reported by Comscore. The company, which allows users to easily create social networks, now has over 200,000 social networks on the platform and is adding another 1,000 or so per day. And Comscore-reported traffic is spiking up nicely: 3.1 million unique visitors/month, generating 71 million page views (February 2008). Ning, in short, looks like it might be a real business. Meanwhile, Ning competitor Flux, which is backed by Viacom, seems to have fallen off a cliff (we’re checking with Comscore on that data - see our earlier post on Flux growth here, including the update).

More Bells, More Whistles

Tonight at 10 pm California time Ning will launch a redesign (screencast here) that includes a updates to the photos, videos, groups, members, profile, forum and blog features (see here and here)

Ning is certainly feature rich, and users are flocking to it (a little porn never hurts, either). What I’d really like to know is how revenue growth is coming along. The company generates fees from advertising and users who want premium features. They’ve raised more than $44 million to date.

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Source: Michael Arrington

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Predicting what Google may do in 2008 is about as accurate as predicting the future using a Magic 8 ball; you can make educated guesses but it’s nothing more than that. There are two certainties however; Google will acquire many companies and they will also launch a range of new products and upgrades to existing products. Here’s a few companies that Google may look at in 2008.

Amazon

The idea of a merged Google + Amazon into a new company Googlezon is an old idea. However Amazon keeps moving into spaces that Google would naturally be a candidate to be in.

Last week Amazon added SimpleDB to its suite of cloud-based IT infrastructure, which also includes storage (S3) and computation (EC2). They are appealing products, and S3 in particular has built a strong client base that as changed the dynamics of online storage. This is a space that Google would logically want to be in. Google is already offering paid online corporate service through Google Apps and they have the infrastructure to offer similar services to Amazon.

Of course the ecommerce side of Amazon is the cream on top. Google has been desperately trying to break into ecommerce with Google Checkout. Google recommending Amazon products via search would be a huge winner.

Rating: Emulate

Amazon’s $37 billion market cap puts it out of range for a Google cash acquisition, although a combination cash/ script offer is not beyond the realms of possibility. Google needs new revenue streams to keep up their continuing high growth rates in 2008, enterprise level hosting and service provision would seem a no brainer for Google, presuming they can get the tech/ implementation right.

SixApart

SixApart has undergone a major refocus this year into what is now primarily a enterprise provider of blogging tools. The mostly free LiveJournal, a competitor to Blogger has been sold, and Movable Type has been open sourced, in part taking away the baggage of running (what was previously) a mostly free to use blogging platform. TypePad offers a serious blogging platform that companies are willing to pay for, something Google doesn’t currently have. Given Google’s push into paid enterprise platform provision TypePad would slot in nicely as an additional feature offered by Google. The stray in the SixApart package is Vox; it doesn’t seem like a natural fit for Google but it can easily be offloaded. A service such as TypeKey would fit nicely into Google’s Profile/ one login everywhere push.

Rating: possible buy

The alternative is Automattic, however WordPress.com competes primarily with Blogger, Akismet could be easily emulated and there’s not a lot of enterprise focused product on offer. There’s every chance that buyers will be circling SixApart in 2008, particularly as the original investors start looking for a buyout as the company hits 4+ years since its initial funding. Google seems like a natural fit, and they would easily be able to afford the maybe mid $xxx million figure.

Ning

The white label social network provider Ning is leading in its space, and of all the companies in this post, Ning is the most perfect fit for Google. As we saw with the announcement of Google Knol, Google is all about facilitating the creative desires of users, as does Ning. Google already offers its own free web hosting with Pages and blogs with Blogger, social networking sites fills the list out nicely. Ning would also mean that Google wouldn’t acquire a company that seriously competes with most of its partners in Open Social; instead of being a major social network owner, Google would simply become the biggest provider of social networks.

Rating: buy

Someone will buy Ning in 2008, Google would be the perfect buyer.

Reuters

Google faces another battle this year with rights holders over news, a battle they could in part lose. Even now media outlets worldwide are trying to find ways of blocking Google from indexing their content. Reuters is one of the worlds top two providers of syndicated news and is profitable. Google wants what Reuters has.

Rating: very long shot buy

AP is owned by the newspapers and will never sell, Reuters is listed making it a possible acquisition target. Google is moving away from simply being the company that indexes the world to being the company that also offers content to the world as well. A Google controlled Reuters would radically change the face of news gathering world wide. Not only would Google have first rights to most of the news worldwide, it could also leverage that control in forming partnerships with media outlets, partnerships that challenge AP and the established order. The possibilities for Google would be great: discounted Reuters news in return for running Google ads or for being indexed by Google, Google offering to host news sites at no cost as part of a content deal, allowing Google to know who was reading what and when. Reuters video and similar visual products would feed into YouTube and Google images. Very much a long shot but an appealing one. Maybe a small stake might be more likely for Google? Either way, Google wants news content from somewhere and I’d bet they’d be willing to pay for it if the deal was right.

If you have any acquisition targets for Google you’d like to share, leave a comment.

SixApart

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Ning

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Amazon

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Source: Duncan Riley

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Hosted wiki provider WetPaint has launched a new white label wiki service called “Just Add Wetpaint”, which let’s businesses buy a customized version of their wiki platform (starting around $10,000). In at most 14 days, the company can pump out a customized community around a product. The communities are hosted by WetPaint on your domain, and share a common login with the rest of the over 600,000 wikis in the WetPaint community.

It may seem trite, but thousands of people are already creating unofficial wikis or joining communities (like fanpop) to talk about shows and products they love. Just Add Wetpaint gives businesses an easy way to generate an official community, as has been done with CSI, Dexter, Tmobile, the always-awesome Myth Busters, and even Oracle.

However, the move buts heads with other white label offerings (these) going after consumer brand communities, most notably Ning and Flux. Companies looking to launch their own communities will have to choose between the offerings (wikis and social networks).

Wetpaint

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Ning

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Flux

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Can’t see the video? Click here

Source: Nick Gonzalez

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Maryland based CollectiveX launched in February 2006 as a way for groups to create a quick and well designed social space online. Users could share calendars, files and contacts, and message each other on a forum.

The original idea overlaps with both LinkedIn and Ning. CollectiveX is a good place for groups like boards of directors to share contact information, files (board minutes, financials, etc.) and share a forum for communication. Since your business contacts are shared just with the people in your group, you don’t have to worry about the “LinkedIn problem: -being constantly spammed for introductions. And like Ning, CollectiveX lets users quickly and easily create a social network. There is less flexibility on the types of networks that can be created, but the added structure is good for certain types of users.

The new product that CollectiveX is launching now is called Groupsites. The video above gives a good introduction to the service. The company is expanding the service to allow for social, not just business, networks. New networks can now be public by choice, and users can create separate professional and social profiles.

Users have a single dashboard to access all of the networks they belong to. They can be viewed one at a time, or grouped. For example, a user can click a button and see all stored files for all groups, and then search within those files.

The basic service is free, and the company charges additional fees for additional storage, advertising removal, etc. Large companies can also pay a yearly license fee to create multiple networks. Accenture and others are customers of this enterprise product.

The company is also simultaneously launching directory of their open social networks at Groupsites.com.

CollectiveX is certainly comparable to some of the better funded sites who’ve spent millions on development. The company has raised only a very small amount of seed funding to date, and what they’ve done with it is impressive. They are also nearly cash flow positive, the company says, and should be profitable by year end. They are beginning to pitch venture capitalists on their Series A round of financing.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: Michael Arrington

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