The internet is a great tool for communicating and connecting. We now have a variety of ways to do so, but which one is best suited for your needs? Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn? Each serves its purpose and audience, but what if your needs aren’t served with these tools? Create your own! Ning is a powerful tool that allows you to not only create a dynamic, easy to update website, but its functionality allows your community to create accounts, share information, connect with you and other people in your community and work collaboratively.

While sitting down to copious piles of stuffing yesterday, I actually did take some time and thought about the things for which I am thankful (my girlfriend’s endless patience, the music of Will Oldham, wine and family holidays). To be honest, I feel a little 1.0, if you wiil, for not yet having made that public.

My organization, IFYC has been working for a long time to develop ways that we can engage youth via social media.

With the development of a Ning Site, the Bridge-Buidlers Network, i think we've finally got it!

http://blog.ning.com/2008/11/building-a-bridge-to-understanding-2.html

Ning has gone a long way since they were featured on the Netsquared blog back in March 2007. Besides offering many more features than they had back then, there are now more than 500,000 social networks on Ning.

We recently got interviewed by the folks at Ning along with the folks from the ASPCA Online Community about our use of their platform in TuDiabetes.com and EsTuDiabetes.com to run our social networks for people touched by diabetes.

I have a personal request for all you Ning and social networking experts out there. My Dad is involved in the creation of the Global Center for Cultural Enterprise and Entrepreneurship which will support cultural entrepreneurs around the world with training, tech support, and policy and funding resources.

Sometimes sharing stuff is better than being forever embarrassed of one’s own creative urges, regardless how critical we might be of ourselves.

Perhaps partially as a result of our explorations in the many social networking tools which have been shown to us at Net Tuesday and at N2Y2, I went nuts and joined 10 social networks on NING, while thinking about the identity of the one that I might create.

In my last post I asked for your help picking the right name for my project. Thanks for all your feedback. Helpalot will be the name, it's short, easy to remember and is informative about the content of the site.

As a reminder a quick summary of the project; building a decentralized charity website with social network aspects. 

Now I'm going towards building a first test version. I plan to build it in May, so I can start testing in June. I could use your advice on how to go about this. The way I see it now, I have three choices: