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?

Summary

I think that Ning is top notch in the hosted social networking arena. A wide array of network features, great administrator controls, white label options, an active developer community and strong funding makes me believe that Ning will be helping social communities to prosper for a long time to come.

- BlueSkies

I happened upon Zedge when I saw a reference to ringtones and discovered a thriving community. With over 5.6 million registered members according to their web site, you won't grow tired of browsing the nicely done profiles that are complete with all the usual features: Details, Interests, Guestbook, Friends, private messaging, etc.

The public gallery offers free wallpapers, games, ringtones and videos from user submissions. Many of the most popular videos are not what I would recommend viewing if you have a heart condition - hot and sexy is a common theme here ... But there are many other categories to choose from including one that I've embedded below.

Click on the cellblock logo in the lower right corner of the widget to bring up the full page view.

Once you create an account you can create as many cellblocks as you wish. What is a cellblock? It's a widget that you can populate with photos and videos.

Here's the awesome piece - you can share this widget and have multiple people contribute to the cellblock collection! There are lots of ways to add media to a cellblock. You can:

• Use your cellphone to send in your favorite shots.
• Send media in via a special cellblock e-mail address that you can choose when you create the cellblock.
• Put a cellblock on your desktop and drag pictures and videos to it.
• Use the folder icon on the widget to select multiple files for upload.

What is supported?

Images: BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG (up to 10MB)
Videos: 3G2, AVI, MOV, WMV (up to 10MB)

What about security?

There are lots of ways to configure how the cellblock can be accessed. You can:

• Decide if anyone is allowed to add content or just you.
  
• Hide your cellblock e-mail address from the public (share with only your friends & family).
• Decide whether contributed content requires your approval to publish.
• Password protect the viewing of the cellblock so that only family & friends with a password access it.

Thanks for visiting our Web site. We've launched Social.com as a place for people to discover interesting sites dealing with Social Networking. This blog will help me to post some occasional news about Social.com, my travels, and perhaps some offbeat or interesting stuff.

First things first, how did Social.com get started?

First registered in 1995, I created a site at Social.com called the Social Cafe which was a fun place with bulletin boards, cartoons, news and other stuff.