OUseful Info

Institutional Social Networks

Reading the feed from Michael Webb's Blog yesterday, I was.... stunned is probably the best word, to read his post "Newspace - a social networking site for new students" which describes "a social networking site for new students at the University, http://newstudents.newport.ac.uk." And why was I shocked? "It's based on Ning..." (a site we've also used as an online social network complement to our two recent SocialLearn workshops).

(The actual NIng site is here: http://newportstudents.ning.com/.) Michael's post describes some of the issues relating to the decision to use Ning, and is well worth a read...

Having dutifully emailed(?) the SocialLearn team to give them a heads up about this site, I got a "yeah, it's happening all over the place" reply back that linked to a site the University of Bradfrod have also set up on NIng: Develop Me! (University of Bradfrod on Ning). This social network appears to offer the "Meet and chat online" bit of a wider project hosted on the University of Bradford website itself: Develop Me! homepage

Here's the Bradford site on Ning:

It's interesting how the openness of the front page of this site compares with what happens if you try to go straight to the Newport Ning site...

So with some institutions feeling adventurous and taking the plunge into the world of social web apps, whilst maintaining some element of control, how will SocialLearn fit into all this? Like this maybe?

That is, maybe SocialLearn could become a trusted gateway to the world of social networks that institutions are more likely to trust than sites like Ning? By providing an open API and clear security model, it may also provide a platform within which insitutions can develop their own social applications or expose their own data to their own students in a social context? In developing a trusted pltform though, a lot would ride on the structure of the governance model, which is still unclear (at the moment, it's being run within the OU, using external developers, as an OU strategic development project).

PS Just trying to find my first mention of Ning on OUseful.info, I cam across this post from over two years ago now about ad hoc learning environments. Reading back over it, i wish I'd worked some of the ideas through more clearly, because they could well have fed into SocialLearn discussions over the last year...

PPS As well as Ning, let's not forget sites like UK based Webjam, which apparently received funding this week to help roll out its white label social network service...

Tags: ning, sociallearn, socialearn, s:l

Posted by ajh59 at July 11, 2008 02:27 PM