Ning

I have yet to receive my validation email from ning, which has made it hard to search for sites pertaining to my groups interest, but I have looked at some sites. I think it's pretty neat. They are clean sites, probably allowing a template, with many functions to ease the involvement of members. I saw one site has fields to fill to sign up for a newsletter, easy. However some pages are far too busy to be effective. As usual, I will try to keep things simple and clean on the page, but I definitely like how many options ning makes available. The nature of the site though, the having a member profile seems a bit half-hearted. "Oh, I have a profile at ning, look at what I care about." Given the public nature of online interactions, and the coming-to-grips with this fact, and the idea of crafting a public image may easily complicate the actual caring about something. Some people do get involved with social and political issues simply for the image and when they do that, they must go to protests and be active to maintain the image--online, with a ning profile, no one has to do anything but join a group to push an image of themselves.