eLearning Weekly

Elgg, Ning, and SocialText September 2, 2009

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).

http://elgg.org

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.

http://www.ning.com

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

http://www.socialtext.com/products

Again, please chime in if you have experience with any of these platforms. I’m curious to hear feedback!