Ning: Going Beyond the Simple Story

We’re happy to congratulate the smart folks over at Ning on the launch of their new version of their cool Social Network platform. But in addition to their hard work on their service, they’ve been doing some really creative writing on their Movable Type-powered company blog that’s worth a closer look.

As you’d expect from a tech startup, there’s a video walkthrough of the new site (it’s easy enough to embed videos from sites like PodTech in your blog), and some brief updates when the usual little launch-day glitches pop up.

But where Ning really went beyond the normal “We have a new product!” platitudes was in the other posts surrounding the launch. Take CEO Gina Bianchini’s “Everything I Ever Needed to Know I Learned by Starting a Web Company” — it’s the kind of personal story that really lets a community know about the human side of a company. We might be biased because a lot of her points are ones that resonate with us at Six Apart as an independent web startup ourselves. For example:

Sometimes it’s really easy to follow the crowd and use the “well, this service did it…” school of product design, even when it goes against what you stand for. We stand for the creation of social networks by everyone. Not just developers, start-ups, or big media companies, but everyone. For us, we see the goal as the freedom to make your social network whatever and whomever you decide it should be.

It’s an important point, well-articulated. And it’s the kind of message we’ve been trying to focus more on ourselves: We want blogging to be for everyone, not just for developers or web experts. So thanks to the entire Ning team, not just for making cool things, but for blogging a story that makes your work even more meaningful.