I was pretty skeptical of Ning when they first launched, mostly because of my contrarian reflex to dismiss anything that is hyped up to be better than sliced bread. However, over the last couple of months I have had an opportunity to re-evaluate my initial position and am gradually becoming a fan. If anything the potential for anyone to have a toolset that they can use to build applications is a pretty compelling goal.

SiliconBeat: Ning’s redesign makes creating social Web sites much easier:

Each created application stays within Ning, another reason you get the feeling there’s a lot of action. You can search any application with a new search bar. You can also see who is using each Ning app, and can add them as friends in your address book, from within the app. Your profile follows you around as you jump from app to app. A space on your profile lets you connect with friends (see partial screen shot below). Also new are ways to bookmark and build and share new applications.

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