Ning.com and Corporate (Social) Web Apps

So I just ran across www.ning.com. Ning is the latest in social web applications designed to bring people together. But the twist here is that it’s a development platform complete with search, php, built-in tagging and a fully-managed content store (no database setup required). Best of all it free, thanks to Marc Andreessen (the guy who brought us Netscape.)

I’ve just started browsing through all of the apps built on the system. What intrigues me about this site are the mashup possibilities and the ramifications it could have in the corporate world. As scary as it sounds, we need more informal collaboration systems being built within teams on the business side. Give them a tools and a sandbox to play in we take the speed of business up a notch.