---
title: "Ning!"
date: 2005-10-04
author: "Richard MacManus"
categories:
  - name: "ReadWriteWeb"
    url: "/category/readwriteweb.md"
tags:
  - name: "2005"
    url: "/tag/2005.md"
---

# Ning!

[24 Hour Laundry](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508061910/http://www.24hourlaundry.com/), the secretive start-up of Marc Andresson, has just released their new product – [Ning](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508061910/http://www.ning.com/). It’s a free online service for “building and using social applications”. Basically it’s a Web 2.0 development tool aimed at *non-developers*. Developers too will benefit from it, because it sounds like a Ruby on Rails for mash-ups – i.e. an easy-to-use development framework.

So what does Ning do? Users can take parts from various web apps and build something unique and personalized. [The Ning FAQ explains](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508061910/http://faq.ning.com/group.php?FAQGroup:title=General+Questions+About+Ning#faq-147218): “Our goal with Ning is to see what happens when you open things up and make it easy to create, share, and discover new social apps.”

[Fred over at TechCrunch has profiled it and he wrote:](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508061910/http://www.techcrunch.com/2005/10/04/ning-launches/)

*“It means anyone can now get their ideas out there and build a project (some people would call it a mash-up) in a few clicks, with no developer experience. And if you are a developer, you can pop under the hood and change it to your liking, no questions asked.”*

It sounds absolutely amazing, so I can’t wait to have a play. The Ning team is excited [on their blog](https://web.archive.org/web/20060508061910/http://blog.ning.com/2005/10/ok_i_am_excited_1.html). This is just the start of the big announcements this week, btw…

*Originally published on ReadWriteWeb ([archived copy](https://web.archive.org/web/20020204040018/http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/ning.php))*