I have been exploring Ning, a simple
framework for building social apps. The promise of Ning is compelling
and it appears like it should be easy to create applications like Craigslist, Flickr or Del.icio.us. Ning was founded by Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreessen.

I was tempted to get a beta developer account and get my hands dirty on
this one quickly. Before that, I did want to check how they were going
to make money from this offering. Once I found that out, I realized
that the details are sketchy and the exposure of creating an app is
huge at this point in time.

Here is the Ning FAQ if you want to read it yourself. Two things caught my attention:

* Application Quota is for public applications is 1GB.
  Note: Don’t know what it would cost for additional storage.

* You need to pay for turning off features like “Clone this app” or “View Source”
  Note: If
I am building a serious application with a lot of effort, I may not
want someone to clone this app. How much does it cost to turn off the
features are not provided

So, long story short, I will wait until they announce more details. I
am sure Ning will come up with answers to the above and I think until
then I will work on my other projects 😉