Mike Arrington’s got a post on Ning, the groovy mash up too, that does a great job of explaining why it’s grooviness has faded a bit–His post is a roadmap for what the group could improve to make the service stronger.
Some Arrington points:
1) You have to know PHP, or at least HTML, to build anything unique on Ning.
Susan sez: Agreed–if this is a smart consumer toy, that’s asking too much–and yet, a *real* developer might not want to use Ning.
2) The APIs are custom; there is no support for key web service APIs.
Susan sez: Yep, isn’t open standards and interoperable APIs part of the point here?
3) Since everything has to be hosted at Ning, mashups are tethered.
Susan sez: Maybe Mike wishes Ning were more of a mashup library, with some Ruby-like tools that folks like me could dig into. Hmmn, that might be cool.
Mike’s got more–worth a read.
Mike Arrington’s got a post on Ning, the groovy mash up too, that does a great job of explaining why it’s grooviness has faded a bit–His post is a roadmap for what the group could improve to make the service stronger.
Some Arrington points:
1) You have to know PHP, or at least HTML, to build anything unique on Ning.
Susan sez: Agreed–if this is a smart consumer toy, that’s asking too much–and yet, a *real* developer might not want to use Ning.
2) The APIs are custom; there is no support for key web service APIs.
Susan sez: Yep, isn’t open standards and interoperable APIs part of the point here?
3) Since everything has to be hosted at Ning, mashups are tethered.
Susan sez: Maybe Mike wishes Ning were more of a mashup library, with some Ruby-like tools that folks like me could dig into. Hmmn, that might be cool.
Mike’s got more–worth a read.