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By MITCH TRAPHAGEN
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Are you among those whose lives are utterly and completely upended whenever Facebook makes a change to their software? Or are you among the millions of people quietly suffering through endless Farmville, Petville, and Mafia Wars posts from your supposed Facebook friends? Could you, would you, do it better if you ran the show?
Well, you can.
Do you want to be the master of your own social networking domain? Mitch World was set up on ning.com in less than a minute.
What you do with it is limited only by your imagination. You can set the colors, upload photographs, run videos, integrate your Twitter feed — you can even run your own ads and possibly make a few bucks from advertising to your friends (C’mon! It’s the American way! Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were friends but do you think Ford ever said, “Hey Tom, how about a few free lightbulbs for my factories?” or Edison ever said, “Gee, Henry, us being neighbors and friends and all, how ‘bout a free Model T?”). And speaking of ads, Ning is also a good place for those just a little creeped out by the targeted ads found on other big social networking sites.
Ning is a do-it-yourself social networking site that caters to both individuals and businesses. Because your Ning website can be private, it has also risen in popularity for educational and student use. Since you create your own site, it serves to foster creativity and individualism rather than submit to the weirdness, sameness and Farmville sheep of 400 million others found on the big social network site. It is a perfect platform for extended families to stay in touch and it gives any group a nice place on the Web to hang out.
It is possible to keep the virtual doors closed on your Ning website. As such, if you want people to find you, you’ll have to do some work to invite them to join you. According to the terms of service, you must be at least 13-years-old to sign up for a free account.
And now continuing with the questioning from the first paragraph: Do the words “social networking” make your head explode but you still want to spill your guts about your breakfast or the guy you saw in the mall or what the crazy neighbor (or crazy elected official) is doing now? Well, there are plenty of places on the Web for you to expand upon your expounding without all the comments, “likes” or Farmville sheep to muddy up your waters. Blogspot.com has been the long-running favorite for people with something to say on the Internet; but like Ning and Facebook, there are alternatives for those wishing to step out of the herd.
If you have some server space of your own, WordPress offers free software to set up your own blog. It’s easy to set up and there aren’t many limitations to what you do and how you do it. For the non-geeks, there are a ton of free templates to at least give a decent appearance of individuality. If you don’t have server space, the organization also offers free blog space and you can be up and running within a minute.
Posterous.com offers a sleek, modern looking blog that can be updated via email from your computer or cell phone.
But please, keep the wars and sheep to yourself.
Ning is at: ning.com
Posterous is at: posterous.com
WordPress is at: wordpress.org
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