tecznotes

I was wondering the same things as TechCrunch:

What happened to Ning? It was the perfect service at the perfect time. Mashups are hot right now. Really hot.

Not sure I agree with the second part, though - Ning didn't seem like the perfect serice for any time. The kinds of people who know what mashups are and how to build them are already conversant in Javascript, PHP, or Ruby. They don't need a Fisher-Price sandbox to play in, especially one that doesn't appear to be as easy as it claims.

How many webservice permutations can there be? Do people even use mashups once the initial wow-factor rubs off? Does Ning's potential developer audience simply realize that the way to independence for a service is to control its own database, and rightly avoid the padded play area?