Monday, March 15, 2010

Ning CEO Gina Bianchini Moving to Andreessen Horowitz | Kara Swisher | BoomTown | AllThingsD

Gina Bianchini, the high-profile CEO of social networking platform Ning, is stepping down and will become an executive in residence at the Andreessen Horowitz venture firm.

I hope this isn't a bad sign.

Ning to me has gotten far less traction than it deserves.

As the first generation of home-user web pages gave way to users buying their own domain name and virtual servers, it seems natural to me that what I consider to be primitive social networks such as MySpace and Facebook should give way to "platforms" as they put it that allows every car club, every condominium, and every something else that starts with "c" to form their own social network, allowing an individual to both own and operate social networks and/or just participate in multiple ones.

Ning has not only failed to draw eyeballs from the lame forerunners, but has failed to spawn copy-cat services, and after all, at Facebook, copy-cat is a specialty!

Anyway, it is discouraging to think that along with Andreessen, my thinking is so far out ahead of the pack as to be invisible to common folk. Or something.

I wish the company (and its founders) well.

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