Ning Virtual Gifts offers a built-in revenue-generating feature for network creators, allowing them to create custom gifts and stores related to the topic of their network.

At launch Ning is offering each user 100 credits in their gift store account, giving them the chance to send at least one virtual gift to a fellow member. Virtual gifts for all Ning Networks will be priced at 75 credits or $1.50 per gift.

"Ning Virtual Gifts brings members new ways to express themselves around the things they care about most," said Jason Rosenthal, senior vice president of Business Operations at Ning.

"Our virtual gifts product is unique in that it can be highly relevant to the activity of each Ning Network – further empowering our Network Creators to capture their members’ imagination.  This is a first step in Ning building upon the inherent context in each Ning Network to drive new revenue opportunities for our Network Creators and Ning." 

Ning Network Creators will have the ability to create custom virtual gifts, select their unique gift store inventory, and participate in a revenue share on the sale of virtual gifts. Transactions will be processed directly to Ning Network Creators via PayPal. Revenue will be split equally between the network creator and Ning after PayPal’s transaction fees.

One of the biggest ‘sideline’ players in this space is Ning. They are doing very well despite some recent decline in numbers. They are doing so well that they picked up some more VC investment. The amount of the investment is not the focus, however, as pointed out over at AllThingsD. It’s the valuation that the investment is based on, which is a hefty $750 million. Not bad for getting just a small percentage of the attention that social media gets in the online press. For the uninitiated here is an overview of the company

Ning is working in a different corner of the social media space than the others

Ning is a platform aimed at offering customizable tools that lets users create their social networks about their interests, such as for fans of the movie “Twilight.”

Ning puts online ads on the sites, using Google (GOOG), and is also working on its own advertising platform. It also offers an array of other services and is planning more soon, such as a virtual gift offering.

Founded in early 2007, it currently has 29.3 million registered users, using 1.3 million social networks, and it adding one million registered users every 15 days, said the company.

Despite the positive news of investment interestTechCrunch reports

In the U.S., unique visitors actually declined 10 percent from May, 2009 to June, 2009, according to comScore. Ning had 5.1 million visitors in the U.S. in June (its worldwide audience is about three times as large).

The company attributes the decline to “some downtime in June as we expand and optimize our infrastructure to support the growth that we are expecting in the next 12 months.” Ning says it is adding 4,000 new Ning Networks every day and one million registered users every 15 days.

Ning lands this relatively small investment while it wasn’t even seeking more. Having Lightspeed Venture Partners on board, however, makes the roster of investors more impressive as the folks at Ning continue to grow their business. that can carry some value later on when they may actually look for money intentionally.

What is your experience with Ning? Do you have any experience at all with the service? What place does a service like Ning truly have? Ning CEO Gina Bianchini says that “We want to be the social network for interests and passions online.” Are there ways one can express passions online without such a service? Give us your passionate thoughts on the subject.

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Ning, for those unfamiliar is not so much a social network, but a platform from which others to create their own social networks. Kyle Ford at the Ning Blog highlights the following features of the company’s integration with OpenSocial:

- The OpenSocial directory on each network automatically inherits the branding and visual design of that network.

– OpenSocial applications on Ning can inherit the visual style of the member profile page to which they’re added.

– OpenSocial applications are automatically integrated into a network’s viral loops. The ability for OpenSocial applications to write to a member’s latest activity feed, send messages on behalf of the member and spread using a network’s default viral sharing options are all there by default.

"Ning is considering integration with Facebook’s platform," writes Venture Beat’s Eric Eldon. "Facebook, however, has been internally debating how to fully open its platform; in the meantime, Ning has focused on OpenSocial integration." Facebook integration would surely be a smart move for Ning. Friendster went this route just last week, and with Facebook looking to expand global operations, it’s probably as good a time as any to jump on board with them.

OpenSocial will provide a great deal of usefulness for Ning users though. The more applications that are available to integrate into a user’s own social network, the more value that network will potentially have for users of that.

Ning allows users to create their own networks, and Marc Andreessen, who cofounded the company, announced its accomplishment on his blog.  70,000 of the 100,000 networks actually materialized during the last seven months, so his company would appear to be on a roll.

Yet amidst the celebrations, Andreessen was quick to answer one possible objection, writing, “[I]t is our goal to have a meaningful number of throwaway, or unused, networks on Ning at any point in time. The whole point of Ning is ease of creation — how easy it is to create your own social network, and play with ideas around that concept.”

Andreessen also asserted that the number of Ning’s users is “growing as an even bigger healthy multiple on the number of networks.”

A request for specifics on that point went unanswered, as did questions about Ning’s plans for the future (Andreessen promised “an incredibly aggressive slate of product development projects,” which certainly sounds interesting).  You can’t blame the company for being uncommunicative, though – 100,000 social networks would keep anybody busy.

Gina Bianchi, Ning’s cofounder, posted a comment on the official blog.  “Holy cow.  We will end the day with over 75,500 social networks on Ning,” she wrote on Thursday.  “I’ve gone fishing this week, but I had to stop and say you all rock.  Expect more network profiles next week when I am back in action!”

There’s a picture of a cupcake, as well.  I’m not sure what it has to do with Bianchi’s post, or with my article, but I’m hungry, so it’s getting mentioned.

Back to the news.  On Monday, Marc Andreessen, Ning’s other cofounder, made an announcement regarding the $44 million.  “[W]e recently closed our first outside investment round – our so-called ‘Series C’ – with a top-notch group of institutional investors,” he stated on the Pmarca Blog.

For those of you who are interested in financial details – and there is one curious bit about Andreessen’s own involvement – he continued, “The round was orchestrated by our friends at Allen and Company in New York. . . .  The round was led by Legg Mason with a number of other investors participating, including me.”

So there you have it – Ning is rich, popular, and in possession of a chocolate cupcake.  Sounds good to me.

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There are an amazing array of features avalable and all customizable through a nice ajaxy interface. Basically if you want to create your own version of myspace or facebook for your own college you can, think of it like yahoo groups 2.0. Check out the Battlestar Galactica group on Ning

To get a good overview of Ning you should check out this scoble show video of the CEO walking you through how you create the site.

Potentially Ning could provide the platform for users to create much more meaningful social “niche-works” which could erode the power of some of the monolithic networks like myspace, facebook etc. With all the companies running to put their pages up on myspace, wouldn’t they be better off cultivating their own social network around their brands?

Remember Vortals?

Tip of the hat to my pals at Adaptive Path who were involved in helping think through and design the tools for people to build their own social networks, good job guys.

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As Mike Arrington notes at TechCrunch, the initial release of the service was somewhat underwhelming, and so I think a lot of people sort of forgot about it. But it has steadily improved, and just rolled out some more enhancements.

I have some first-hand experience with Ning, because I decided awhile back to use it as a tool for helping to plan a journalism school reunion that I’m involved with. It’s been quite awhile since I was at Ryerson in Toronto (don’t ask how long or I’m liable to punch you), and many of my former classmates have scattered to the winds. After a couple of members of the group sent out some emails trying to get a reunion under way, it became obvious that having a single place to co-ordinate things would make a lot of sense. One or two people mentioned MySpace, but it seemed too — well, MySpacey. Then I thought of Ning.com.

The reason Ning came to mind was that a Toronto group — helmed by Mark Dowds — created a site related to a new “open office” concept called Indoor Playground. It seemed relatively simple to add members, send out updates, upload photos and had a nice, clean look to it, so I decided to try it out. In just a few minutes I had the site set up (there is even more customization available with the new features), and apart from a few glitches in getting people signed up — it’s invitation only — it was a no-brainer.

Om has some thoughts about the new Ning, and Scoble has an interview with Marc Andreessen and CEO Gina Bianchini up at Podtech — and Ms. Bianchini has a post on the Ning blog with some of the insights that she has gained from starting the company (I particularly like the “Underhype your service” one). Frantic Industries has a good overview of the service too.

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While the company has been operating for more than a year, this week was its official coming-out announcement.

If you’ve not heard of Ning, it lets you easily create you own social networking sites. Options include the creation of your own YouTube-style video site, and a MySpace-style social networking platform.

I’ve been playing around with Ning, and it gets my thumbs-up simply because of ease of use. I’ve already used it to create a local networking site for Internet marketers in the Triangle area of North Carolina, and even tested out their video service.

The company plans to offer new features and upgrades in December, which should make it even more compelling.

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.