So I tried to publicly engage someone from Ning on the issues surrounding their promotion of their # of overall networks - but lack of details on what those #’s really represent.

I asked to find out:

- how many of these 230,000 networks had more than 5 people in them

- more than 10 people in them? more than 150 people in them?

- how long were people staying on these networks? what were they doing?

This kind of information is useful to us all - sociologists, entrepreneurs, social media practitioners, etc.

Hearing about the total number of networks is almost useless.

Sure sure - some people may call my request motivated by some sort of jealousy over Ning’s recent absurd valuation and funding of an additional $60M (which is AFTER the investment banker fees - as Marc has pointed out!) But that’s besides the point.

Marc Andreessen blogs.

It may be unfair to ask Brooke Hammerling (the Ning PR person I publicly requested an answer from…) to blog, but Marc already has his blog set up.

Recent posts on why he’s supporting Obama, why he’s tickled pink about getting all that money and other juicy topics are fine for him to blog about.

But the blogosphere is a two-way conversation. I read about that in Cluetrain.

Brooke did answer me ‘back channel’ via email and I’ve had others approach me telling me I’m supposed to leave Brooke alone (she OBVIOUSLY has powerful friends.)

These same people told me I’m supposed to bring this up with Marc.

And since he spells his first name the right way - I figure I’m entitled to at least a little public conversation on these issues.

We’ll ignore the issues of the valuation and whether or not Ning EVER has to become “cash flow positive” (that’s VC talk for “profitable“.) And the related matters of monetizing users for the explicit purpose of selling out and reaping huge benefits (read: “profits“.)

I gotta wonder if the word ‘altruism’ ever strikes home? Is there anything besides making a profit that matters?

We’ll also ignore the issue (for now) of Ning being truly open and whether or not they will allow individuals or entire networks to export their data to some other network. Ning has - in fact - in the past pointed to code that would facilitate that exporting - so I have no reason to believe they would prevent that from happening (what about IMPORTING networks?)

In fact I do care about Ning - even though some people get all snarky about it - I think Ning exposing these #’s will give us a great opportunity of looking at the phenomena of social networking in a new way. Its not about the quantity, its about the quality.

Metcalfe’s Law should not apply to relationships. It’s NOT about the more the merrier.

I’d much rather be on a network of 150 then 150M.

When Marc blogged about Ning surpassing 200k networks - he stated that 70% of the networks were active and that less than 1% of the networks were p0rno. So he obviously thinks we’re ‘kind of’ interested in the details - we just want MORE details - please.

So how about it Marc? Would you release this data so that folks like danah boyd can understand what’s going - on - even better? I posted an open letter to you and Gina last summer - but I never got a reply (public or private.) Hopefully I will this time.

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