After doing some research, on the listings some of you have provided here in this group, I have come to these conclusions for myself, pertaining to which are the best OVER-ALL sites to consider and further investigate.

These are my Top Picks for further examination, where it concerns Create Your Own Social Network sites. The following sites seem to be the most similar to, and competitive with, the Ning Platform, due mostly to the fact that these sites are crawled by search engines, and other sites seem to require a web hosting service to accomplish the same thing. My conclusions are also based on what the marketing information revealed to me, which was readily available on each of the sites I examined.

So Far, My First Choice Would Be Grou.ps.

     Follow Up: I joined Grou.ps and was very impressed with their Free offerings. Very similar to what we have here at Ning. However, their network is still in Beta, and I found a few items that are causing problems. So far I found that you can't delete music albums once you create them, and there doesn't seem to be an allowance for deleting your main account either. Most probably, some other minor problems exist. With input from it's members, these issues shouldn't be that hard to resolve, so I think it would be worth the investment of time, for those of us how need a more detailed service!

NOTE: Their Free version does allow for a lot of HTML coding, but not sure about CSS. I believe, I read, they are currently working on installing the capability for it. (I'm not that experienced with CSS) Grou.ps does have language editors, member controls & the whole shabang. When this network gets up & running it should be very nice, indeed!

So Far, My Second Choice Would Be Spruz.

     Follow Up: Spruz seems to have everything that Ning has to offer, just a different way of using the controls and a different layout, which you have to get used to. I believe you can also use an older version of language editing, if that is important to you. They also allow for CSS mode and offer widgets, google, HTML boxes, rich text editors, etc. Haven't found any problems with their network, that I can remember. I hearing, Spruz has a much smaller bandwidth allowance than Grou.ps. Summary: Seems like the number two choice for transfering to, so far.

I Examined, But Haven't Rated This Site Yet SocialGo.

     Follow Up: I tried out SocialGo and though they seem like a good network, I found most of their offerings are Premium Service. Their Free offering would be good for anyone who doesn't depend that much on asthetics or detailed programs and allowances. Summary: I don't think you will be disappointed in the Free version of SocialGo, if you think your requirements will survive on Standard Straight-Up Social Networking!

Haven't Investigated Yet Mixxt.

Haven't Investigated Yet Grouply.

Other sites listed, here in this group, are also very nice sites, and some offer very good, if not better, tools for building a network. The problem is, with these sites you will probably have to register with a hosting service to get any kind of outside exposure. That is, anything other than that provided by the network's internal platform.

Hope This Information Helps,
Bartabs Owner - Joe

P.S.   Jen's Directory should be a compliment to any platform you decide on, because any decisions you make, won't effect The Directory's ability, to create outside exposure for your listings, here on her site.