Marc Andreesen and Gina Bianchini's social networking service, Ning, has raised another $60M at a rather astonishing pre-money valuation of $500M.
Ning has about 230,000 social networks which values each social network at over $2,000 each. I personally have 2 networks which I have setup in the past that have a grand sum of 15 users. I really can't see them being worth $20 let alone $2,000. But no doubt the 80/20 rule applies and there are a small minority of highly successful social networks using Ning. And, of course, investors are buying into the vision of 4M social networks and billions of page views by 2010. By that stage Ning will no doubt be hoping to worth more than Facebook.
Fast Company has a good profile on Ning which talks about how they have built the "viral loop" into their product. Any product, including enterprise software, could benefit from thinking through how to apply a viral loop to their feature set.
The funny thing is that Ning's unassuming offices are opposite Facebook's on Emerson Street here in downtown Palo Alto. I guess Mark (Zuckerberg) and Marc (Andreesen) can stare out the window at each other wondering who has the better business model?
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