Ning.com is apparently now out of beta. Intended as a kind of incubator
for new social apps with minimal coding required, Ning is unique in that
it has a suite of template apps from which your app can inherit
characteristics and improve upon.
According to the Ning blog (blog.ning.com) they are expecting support
for multiple languages soon, including Ruby.
Ning's latest features, which I believe are critical for the success of
the platform, include backup/restore with 30-minute autosave, Google
Adsense and YPM support, and domain mapping. When Ning was initially
launched, I took notice of the lack of domain mapping and ad support in
particular, wondering about how the effort would fare without these
incentives.
Now I see that Ning is really driven by the playground concept- the ease
of creating, modifying, even combining ideas. The users are likely
motivated out of curiosity, playfulness, and creativity, providing a
fertile ground for innovating social apps.
Ning is even working on developing a way to develop new apps from
scratch "without any coding" which they admit sounds impossible but is
one of their "primary misions this year." I look forward to seeing that
feature in action.
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