ChartingStocks has been putting a serious smackdown on Ning, a company that lets you roll your own social network. Readers of this blog will know I am a big believer in niche social networking and am literally betting my entire life on this concept as that is what my business is about.

See the ChartingStocks' smackdown:

Ning Exposed - Tech Company Ning Scams its Clients | Charting Stocks
Ning Takes Important First Step; Is it Enough? | Charting Stocks
SocialGo to Benefit from Ning Chaos? | Charting Stocks

Basically there are a few things going on here:

1. Many Network Creators -- individuals and organizations that are building their own social network on Ning -- are feeling a bit cheated, as they think Ning is trying to create its own mega-social network, and is simply exploiting Network Creators to meet this end.

2. Network Creators also feel as though Ning is not taking them or their concerns seriously, as evidenced by Ning deleting posts made by Network Creators on the Ning discussion forums.

This is an issue that has cropped up before for Ning -- see our previous coverage on the Ning vs. Widget Laboratory showdown.

The problem here is simple: Ning is a platform, meaning it ultimately wants other companies to build their business on top of Ning (just like how Apple and Windows compete for software developers to build software on their respective operating systems). But in order to build a business on someone else's platform, a few things are needed:

1. You need to think the platform you are going to build on top of is going to help you make money. Perhaps they can help you with marketing, or perhaps they are easy to develop cool stuff for.

2. You need to trust them. This is huge. When you build on someone else's platform you need to be able to trust them that they are not going to screw you over.

And this is why a killer web platform has yet to emerge. Facebook is trying. Ning is trying. But ultimately, both need something akin to a Constitution that guarantees rights for businesses, as well as something akin to a fair trial in the event that platform participants need to be kicked off.

This is not simple. As we've noted before, ultimately developers and those that build their business on top of platforms are in control; that is who the platforms compete for. I believe this will ultimately lead to platforms being owned by those that build their business on top of them; see our previous post on this subject, "How the Platform Game Will Play Out."

And so to get there, platforms need to start giving more and more rights to the companies that build on top of them, essentially setting up their own legal system for the participants in their economy. This will be doubly challenging when one considers that sooner or later, and probably sooner, such a legal system would challenge real world legal systems. As I noted previously, this is how platforms disrupt the nation-state.

Getting there will require a deeper understanding of governance, politics, and political history. It will also require a level of maturity that is almost completely lacking in the Internet business community, as most of them are still foolish enough to think it is in their best interests to not say anything bad about government and not really challenge the system in any way even though the government is now literally printing money and giving it to its friends, and this runs a very real risk of devaluing the US dollar and destroying the entire US economy (and much of the global economy as well). Fear is always a sucker bet, though, and is the leading reason why platforms on the web are stagnant and not living up to the revolutionary potential we know they have.