Profilactic.com

Website

"Profilactic.com is an online identity aggregator that pulls together all of the profiles and content that you create at sites like Flickr, twitter, MySpace, Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook, Zooomr, Vimeo, YouTube and many

Network Creation

First you'll need to get your own Ning Id. In fact, all your users will also need to do the same. This may be considered to be somewhat of a drawback since you don't have access to your user's registration information. This is somewhat mitigated by being able to collect special information from the user via their profile that is only visible to the Network Creator (ie. e-mail addresses). Some other white label providers such as KickApps provide for a single sign-on procedure for integration with an existing user base.

Network creation is a breeze. There is a nice walk through as you create your network where you can name it, select a theme, select the features your network will have, etc.

White Label

If you want to brand your network as your own, you will want to add some premium features. As of this post, these features included:

• Use your own domain name for $4.95/month.
• Remove Ning promotion links for $0/month (not sure when they made this free)
• Run Ads on your social network for $19.95/month. Not really a white label feature, but does allow you more control by being able to remove ads altogether or run your own.

Features

Ning is a feature rich social network. A customizable homepage can be complemented nicely by tabs to pages for Members, Forum, Groups, Photos, etc. You can create Badges to promote your social network and there exists a built-in means for Facebook application integration. Currently offered Facebook applications include a Music Player, Video Player and Photo Slideshow so that your members can play media from your network.

Private or Public

Your new network can be set to private or public. If it is public, anyone is free to join. In fact existing Ning users can re-use their Ning Id to login to your network. I like this username consolidation, but better might be to allow for use of OpenID for your online identity.

If you would like more control over your network then set it to Private. New memberships are by invitation only. You can choose whether to allow existing members to invite new people, or leave that completely to your own control. You can also optionally allow prospective members to request an invite via a form that you can enable on your homepage

What I'd like to see

There is one feature that I'd like to see added - a restore option in the event of catastrophe. Currently Ning does allow a Network Creator to backup information from their network. There is information about this titled

Creator the ability to move their network off of the Ning platform if this became desirable or necessary.

What is missing is a Restore feature. It is easy to delete a Ning Network. Login to your Ning account as Network Creator, and click on a link that says Delete Your Social Network (you are prompted of course to make sure you really want to do this). What if this wasn't you that logged into your account, but a hacker that got hold of your password?