Monday, January 21, 2008

Public vs Private

It has to be public. Transparency wins. I should have known better.

In my rush to start up a social network on Ning for my educator colleagues, I made a decision to go with a private network. Part of this was to get rid of the ads. For an educational network that might include 13-18 year olds (secondary kids in a tech support role), Ning was willing to get rid of the ads. But I had to make the network private.

Only members could see it. Members had to be approved by me. These were for sure backward steps from where I had hoped to go, but I wanted the ads gone and the biggie was I thought I'd have a chance of getting the Ning through our school district filter.

I should have read the Ning FAQ on Public vs. Private.

Private networks do not have rss feeds.

End of discussion.

tictech.ning.com is public.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree. For an online community to be able to grow, people have to be able to lurk and browse the content without having to sign up for an account.