Inside UNR

[Kirby]

People have told me that Facebook is dying and this will be the new big thing. I see there are 50 some odd members but.... does anyone really use this?

[Michael Higdon]

Hey Kirby, I know what you mean. Inside UNR is a social networking experiment, I'm trying to see if the mantra "if you build it they will come" works in this setting. I've found that people will come but they won't necessarily play if there's only an infrastructure or if it's not run by profiles and applications like facebook.

Some of the other Ning sites in the Reno area (not including the 200,000 already in existence) work on a different model. For example, the UNR Envrionment and Reno Baby! (all of the links/badges can be found on the homepage) are far more successful because of the more narrow topic/niche they are based on. Also, both of them have news or some form of journalism/journalist that helps direct conversations (I am one of them) but this site does not (it's a control to the variables).

I am doing a lengthy paper on this topic and have been studying it all semester.

Aside from some of the current functional downfalls of Ning, I suspect the model of social interaction trump Facebook because of the niche aspect, proximity of people and public nature (everyone can see everything) of the network. I believe it will not necessarily replace Facebook but will likely offer more features in the end and appeal to more local people (Ning is constantly upgrading). The problem with Facebook is that it's severely fragmented but it's also more cohesive from a user perspective in a weird way. Ning simultaneously defragments local communities and fragments others. For example, I'm part of twelve Ning sites, three of which are UNR related and two that are Reno related but there is no way for me to connect any of those together as a user or an admin.

So the question then becomes: What's missing from Ning and how do we make it more cohesive?

Sorry for the long response, but you asked. :)