So I received an email today from a person calling himself "Angry Ninger" who tipped me off to this article on ChartingStocks. The article documents the ongoing saga Ning has had with Widget Laboratory and other members of its ecosystem. See our previous discussions on Ning's various feuds, here and here.

To summarize briefly, here's the deal:

1. Ning is a company that lets you roll your own social network. In other words, it lets you make your own site like Facebook or MySpace.

2. Just like Facebook has all sorts of apps (i.e. send someone a gift, play a game, take meaningless quizzes, etc) Ning has these types of applications as well. So if you've got your own social network on Ning, you can choose what applications you want your members to use as well. This gives you powerful customization capabilities, so that you can create a unique community with a rich social experience.

3. Now the problem that keeps coming up over and over again is one of governance. Obviously, Ning has a stake in each community. But so does the community owner who created their social network on Ning. And so do the people who creating applications. And so are the members who are a part of each social network.

And right now, everyone is fighting with another.

The latest controversy is stemming from an application created by Widget Laboratory which made it easy to transfer your entire community to SocialGo, a direct competitor to Ning that has more or less the same product offering and business model (for now, at least). Ning blocked the Widget Laboratory application. In doing so, Ning basically confessed to being like Hotel California: you can check out anytime you'd like, but you can't never leave.

Assuming I am understanding this correctly (and please correct me if I am not), this seems like a very poor move on Ning's part. I'm quite surprised, as Ning's CEO, Marc Andreessen, is no dummy and is noticeably more intelligent, experienced, successful, and visionary than other Internet entrepreneurs. And so I would expect the company to understand the futility of trying to lock customers in this way. But of course, there are plenty of things that can go wrong in a company, intentionally or accidentally, and so knows WTF the deal is.

The larger issue, though, as we have discussed numerous times on this blog, is what is the proper resolution here? Well, as we move deeper and deeper into the social web -- i.e. web 2.0, or the phase where people start using the web not just to consume content but to create content and socialize as well -- Internet companies will need to think more about governance. Ning has a diverse ecosystem of network creators (people who create social networks on Ning), app developers, users who are members of social networks. Likewise, Twitter has all sorts of applications built on top of it -- i.e. Twitterberry, HootSuite, Twitterific, Stocktwits, etc -- and they too will need a proper governance system.

The simple problem, of course, is fear and greed. Afraid, because we are in new territory here; business that do not leverage networking technology generally will not have these types of problems. This is an Internet thing. And greed, because no one wants to sit down and find a way to share the pie. Of course, the irony is that that's precisely how you make the biggest pie, and enrich everyone by doing so.

With my business, our goal is to create a "government" of sorts that lets niche social networks work together when advantageous, while still allowing maximum independence and soverignty. To truly be free, any niche social network must allow for data portability -- the ability to easily get your data out of the social network and plug it into another one. The next step is to be able to host your niche social network on your own servers, or perhaps a set of servers that meet a certain criteria. But in any event, I have a tough time seeing much progress on this front without the establishment of a government -- something that ensures all the participants in a given ecosystem are represented fairly, and that there is an agreed upon process for dispute resolution (i.e. something like a court system). When this path is pursued with enough diligence, the results will be truly revolutionary, and will, in my opinion, redefine the concept of the nation-state as well as the global money supply. This is, of course, a topic I've been ranting about for several years now; see our previous post on how platforms bring about the death of nation-states and corporations.

The song for the post is, of course, the Kid Mercury classic, "Ode for Marc Andreessen," a song thanking Marc Andreessen, CEO of Ning, for linking to 9/11 truther Rosie O'Donnell. Hahahahahaha! Hey Marc, if you see this, you know I'm just joking with you about the Rosie O'Donnell stuff, and don't worry about being associated with 9/11 truth, you know once the dollar collapses all bets on the old world are off, and 9/11 truth will be cool (well, it already is cool, because the truth always is -- now it just needs to be accepted).