NING RAISES $44 MILLION... GOOD OR BAD NEWS FOR GOINGON?

Marc Andreessen's startup, Ning, has closed a $44 million round from Legg Mason and other investors. Pre-money is supposedly at $170 million, so that's a post-money valuation of $214 million post.

Is this good or bad news for GoingOn Networks? :)

GoingOn Networks is straddled between other private-label social media platforms targeting companies/enterprise (i.e. Pluck), who we consider our primary competitors, and Ning, which primarily targets social groups and smaller organizations, since we also allow users to create free, easy-to-build networks.

Enterprise Social Media Platforms (i.e. iUpload, Pluck) <=> GOINGON NETWORKS <=> Ning

Ning is the only company within our space with a similar vision as ours to be a network of networks. Different approach but similar objective to allow users have a single profile and a common social network backend for all of the communities their users belong to.

Of course they are ahead of us in development and activity. As we move out of our lengthy beta period over the next few weeks, we have 1,000+ networks (many not publicly listed) to Ning's 73,000+ networks. I wonder what they will do with that $44 million? Could be bad news for us, but competition is always good :)

Good news is that we have a benchmark for valuation for our future funding rounds even though it seems a bit ridiculous looking at Ning's current revenue model from a distance, but I assume much of it rides on Andreessen's reputation and successful track record. Regardless of their valuation, we just have to put our heads down and execute our vision and strategy. Don Dodge has a good post on this topic here.

GigaOm has more here, "The Continous Commoditization of Social Networks"

Rob Hof has more here, "Marc Andreessen's Ning Raises Huge Round of Funding"