Elgg, Ning, and SocialText September 2, 2009
Posted by B.J. Schone in eLearning.Tags: Design, Development, eLearning, elgg, Learning, ning, sociallearning, SocialNetworks, socialtext, technology, Tools, Training, Web 2.0
trackback
Several social media platforms have emerged over the past few years which allow you to create your own social network. Organizations are using these platforms to aggregate some or all of their social learning tools so employees don’t have to keep jumping from application to application. These platforms generally have user profiles, status updates (pseudo micro-blogging), collaboration tools (ex. wikis, blogs), and more. I personally haven’t had a ton of experience with these platforms, but I’m anxious to dig in and learn more. Please chime in and comment on your experiences if you’ve used Elgg, Ning, and/or SocialText.
Elgg
-
"Elgg empowers individuals, groups and institutions to create their own fully-featured social environment."
Pricing
Elgg software is licensed under the GPL version 2 from the Free Software Foundation. The full license is here.
Hosting
You can download and run Elgg on your own servers or you can pay to have somebody host it for you (see hosting information).
Ning
-
"Ning lets you create and join new social networks for your interests and passions."
Hosting
Ning hosts your social network(s) for you.
Pricing
Ning has both free and paid options. The free version has ads. For some reason I was unable to find the exact pricing details on the Ning site.
SocialText
-
"With Socialtext (People), you get social networking deeply integrated with enterprise collaboration. "
Hosting
SocialText can host your site or you can install the application(s) locally, depending on what packages and options you select.
Pricing
Details here: http://www.socialtext.com/products/pricing.php
Again, please chime in if you have experience with any of these platforms. I’m curious to hear feedback!
B.J. Schone
Eric Matas
kevinthorn
eLearning Weekly 
BJ, you might be interested in the following:
My comparison of Elgg, Ning and Facebook at http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/handbook/comparison.html
My Elgg community site at http://www.c4lpt.net/
My All things Elgg blog with some featured elgg sites at http://janeknight.typepad.com/elgg
BJ,
I have a Ning site that I am using as a tool for social learning about teen dating violence, http://www.teendatingviolence.ning.com.
BJ,
We have integrated Elgg for social functionality on our trivia and puzzle games site http://www.braindash.com and also do Elgg work for third parties http://www.brain-media.co.uk. Having used both Ning and Kickapps (another white label social network platform) previously our experience is that Elgg provides more flexibility and, being open source, is more cost effective when you are looking at medium scale implementations. As with most decisions the right choice of platform does of course depend on precisely what you want to use it for.