Social media and social networking.  The terms are all the rage these days as products and brands look for more real interaction with consumers.  

Major social networks you probably know include LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and Twitter.  All very popular and all seem to be thriving.  However, what are you going to turn if you want to create your own social network site?  Who can help you with building a site and getting it up and running in a hurry?

 Ning.  No, that’s not a typo.  Ning.  Rated as the 55th most popular web site in the America by Alexa, it has more than 12,000 incoming links.  The company was founded in late 2004 and bills itself as an online platform that empowers people to create and discover new social experiences.  The company also says it has close to one million social networks on the Ning Platform, which would be the largest number of unique social networks on the Internet.

You many know about other companies that build social networks for companies. Pluck, for example is a Texas based company that bills itself as a leader in Social Media.  In addition to USA Today and Whole Foods as customers, Pluck also has a few sports clients which include the National Football League (NFL), the Dallas Cowboys, Livestrong.com and Men’s Health.

Stats are verified by Compete.

But let’s come back to Ning.  Ning is a Do-it-Yourself Social Media site.  Look at the consistent growth over the past year.  In April of last year, the site had more than 1.7 million unique visitors and by March of 2009, that number had exploded to more than 7 million monthly unique visitors and climbing.

While it might take a bit more hands on time than just hiring an outside agency to build the site, the advantages include:

1)    More affordable

2)    Quicker to bring to market

3)    Easy to scale

Ning says owns can choose public or private, members only social networks, moderation options and things like invitation engine.

A friend of mine used Ning to build his social networking site and it so far, satisfied.

Happy building and good luck.