January 2006 Archives

Phil Ringnalda, to Diego: You don't *have* to promote your work in your personal weblog, but if you're trying to hold it back to keep from being one of "those" bloggers, well, I think maybe you've overdone it.

Hello, everyone. I'm Yoz Grahame, Developer Advocate for Ning, and I think it's time I started blogging again.

(I'm going to have to keep it concise; partially because there's a balance to be kept, partially because attention spans are even shorter than they used to be (especially mine) and partially because it's the only way I get get this thing started. Blogging is a Pillar Of Daunt for me at the best of times, but now that I'm working in public... it takes a run-up, y'know?)

Anyway, some of the story is this: We were mostly as the mice for two and a half months after Ning launched, then (after we realised that we were being way too quiet, and had not given people enough cause to investigate beyond thinking that we were just providing an easy way to make your own HotOrNot clones) decided that we should be a lot louder. And then this happened (and Diego's post which was so good it was lauded by Salon) and it's time to shout about things a little more, y'know?

Ning is not the Alpha and Omega, nor the cream that will revive your deadened scalp, plump your lips, ease the pounds from your waist. But it is the project I've been dreaming of working on since - goodness, is that the time? - since 1995. Yep, that long. (This is not hyperbole, and will be properly explained.) It night not take over the world, nor make us all rich, nor even provide me enough cash to get the kid through kindergarten; but it's damn well worth a try, because it's the latest iteration of the most interesting idea the internet has ever seen - an idea that's been almost criminally underexploited, and whose time has come. That is the most prominent of the many reasons why I'm on board.

It'll need some explaining, though. New web apps sell themselves from the word go; platforms take a little longer. Let me just get MT working properly again, and I'll be right back...