Andreessen’s Ning launches social network tool

Ning, the free service that gives you the power to create your own social network for anything, today unveiled Ning Version 2, which brings together powerful new features and levels of customization not before offered by any social networking service.

On Ning, you mix and match your choice of features (for example, videos, photos, music, forums, profiles, and blogs) from an ever-growing list of options, customize every aspect of how your social network looks, add a logo if you have one, make it public or private, and offer your members the ability to make their profile pages uniquely their own.

“Today’s social networking services are fantastic, but they are very similar in approach to AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy in the early nineties. They have a fixed and rigid view of what people can do,” says Marc Andreessen, co-founder and CTO of Ning. “The web is filled with people who want the freedom to create, to express themselves, and to connect with other people in new and interesting ways. Hopefully, Ning contributes in a small way to this growing freedom for everyone.”