Ning is a Social Network provider. anyone can create a Social Network and join the Ning Community. it could be considered the Blogger.com for Social Network given how quick you can create a Social Network for whatever you have in mind (that is allowed) without having to work much for it. that is is why the recently reached 500,000 Social Networks in Ning. of course that most of them are fodder but given the quantity of Social Networks created there are a lot of jewels in the Ning Community

Widgets and Widget-apps (Social Network integrated Widgets) has always been a weak spot for Ning. Having that in thought. Ning did found a good solution by going with OpenSocial. there are many Instant Social Network providers now that want to compete with Ning. i seriously doubt any of the late in the game competitors could really make a dent to Ning but Ning is not taking any chances. on a second thought. they just needed Widgets and they needed them fast to make their users happy after the whole Widgets Laboratory fiasco that left Ning in a little PR storm not too long ago.

OpenSocial Support fixes both problems and replace them with 3 perks for them:

1.-Staying way ahead of any possible competitor

2.-Getting Widgets and Widget-apps to make Ning users happy.

3.-Ning gets a better Developer Network that the one they had.

This will start with Users Profiles and the support will be limited to 30 widgets available right now while the Support gets better and more OpenSocial Widgets get ported to work with Ning as more OpenSocial developers get interested with Ning. while this is not a full solution since it is only for Users Profiles. OpenSocial Widget Integrations for the actual Ning Social Networks should follow fast enough.

Ning Official Announcement

OpenSocial is now live across our more than 500,000 social networks this morning. This release replaces and improves our older “Gadgets” beta functionality, and enables Network Creators and their members to add all sorts of great new features, or Applications, to their profile pages with a single click.

Each social network on Ning now offers more than 30 OpenSocial applications from which to choose, including file sharing from Box.net, poll creation from Polldaddy and e-commerce from Shopit.

It’s been a pleasure to work with the vibrant (and ever-growing) community of OpenSocial developers and see the diversity of the applications they’ve created.

Dave Westwood, who built a fantastic application called BuddyPoke, was especially enthusiastic, stating that “Releasing BuddyPoke on Ning has been the easiest port we’ve done, taking just an hour to be up and running. Excellent documentation. Congratulations!”

Here are some cool highlights of our OpenSocial integration:

• The OpenSocial directory on each network automatically inherits the branding and visual design of that network.
• OpenSocial applications on Ning can inherit the visual style of the member profile page to which they’re added.
• OpenSocial applications are automatically integrated into a network’s viral loops. The ability for OpenSocial applications to write to a member’s latest activity feed, send messages on behalf of the member and spread using a network’s default viral sharing options are all there by default.

So there you have it. Ning Widgets will be now OpenSocial Widgets. that is another good news for those that have chosen OpenSocial to develop as they now count with other option to display their work.

Ning Developer Network

Ning

via Ning Blog