Spruz – Create and Grow Your Own Social Network

After being through the dramas that occurred at Ning and now Grou.ps (see yesterday’s post), I have now moved by social networking activities over to Spruz. I did think that Grou.ps had a lot of potential, but having abandoned that platform I am trying out the Spruz platform. So far I am impressed. I think some of the themes could do with some work and the one I am using is fairly average I guess, but it does the job. Maybe I can tinker with it some more when I have a bit more time.

Without doubt I’d have to say that the platform at Spruz is far more stable and the outfit far more professional than what I was used to over at Grou.ps. So in short, thus far Spruz has my endorsement.

http://www.spruz.com

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Grou.ps – Free, but Not Really

I haven’t posted for a few days on this Blog. Reason? I have been busy deactivating social networks and deleting information I have stored on the Grou.ps platform. I have also been advising members in these communities to do the same.

I was once an advocate for Grou.ps, despite the many problems that existed there, sure that the service was improving and there was great potential in the platform. Now I feel that I have been betrayed by a platform I defended and pushed. Why do I feel this? The service has decided to go premium – though there is a free option also. However, the free option removes the privacy and moderation that owners of Grou.ps communities were assured of. You can just imagine what will happen with spam and privacy under these circumstances. Added to that, the platform is plagued with performance issues and seemingly full of bugs (at least that has been my experience and that of many others in the support forums).

I will not be supporting Grou.ps and longer and withdraw all of my endorsements of their product. As someone in the support forum said, they don’t mind paying for a service that works. Neither do I, but there is also the issue of the bad taste left in my mouth as a result of the way Grou.ps has ‘betrayed’ their loyal members and users.

http://grou.ps/

The Fridge

If you’re interested in setting up a group/community/social network, perhaps you might like to check out ‘The Fridge.’ The Fridge is a place where you can set up a free group/community/social network. There are plenty of places these days for setting up a group and/or a social network. You could of course try Google Groups, Grou.ps and/or Yahoo Groups. If you are happy to pay there are other possibilities including Ning. The Fridge is not a site I had even heard of until a few days ago, but it could be worth a look or worth experimenting with for a while.

A member of a Fridge group gets a personal profile, which has a wall similar to Facebook. You can also post a photo for your profile. It really is a very simple social network providing a very basic service. It really seems to be a way of having very basic communication with other members of the group. You can post a picture with a post. So basically it provides a secure and private place for communicating. I guess email really accomplishes the same thing to some degree.

Have a look at:

http://www.frid.ge

Ning Free No More

Ning, the site that allows you to create your own social network, is going to discontinue its ‘free’ service and only have paying clients. I used to use Ning but changed to the Grou.ps platform about a year ago. I believe I made the right decision when I did so and now I really feel I made the right decision back then.

If you would like to visit Ning, click on the link below. However, I have a feeling that many social networks will be fleeing Ning and looking for alternatives.

http://www.ning.com/