OpenUru.org

Ning vs blogs… I use WordPress for my free blog and continue to intend to move it to one of my web sites. Ning is something I’m very fuzzy about. OU has blog, wiki, and forum resources available. Which is better I can’t say. But, there are some things about blogs and forums that are related.

I think of a blog as a forum with all opening posts by the owner or a small team. It is possible to have a number of people that can post articles on a blog. Blogs do allow comments and can allow a series of branching sub-threads. The SL blogs demonstrate that well. One can reply/comment on the opening post or reply to one of the comments. In a way it provides better trains of conversation than a forum. The SL blog shows that extended conversations have display problems after just a few replies to replies.

How is Ning better or worse? I don’t know. A quick look around reveals this: Is Ning the Next step? The ability to transport data to a new platform is always a consideration for me. Ning seems to lack that. Ning is apparently more of a social networking tool than a blog or forum. I get it is somewhat like Facebook but allows private development of a Facebook like app. I need to learn more to make intelligent comments.

WordPress allows export and is a common enough format most services support it. It also allows one to backup a blog easily… hmmmm… I prolly ought to do that. It is not that easy to use as a ‘primary’ social networking tool and is mostly a one way communication tool.