Having used both sites for about two weeks, there is still a great deal I am learning to do with both Ulitzer and Ning, but a reader asked if I would do a quick comparison, so I will.

The obvious point for me is that the sites have two different objectives for the writers.  For Ning, the writer is trying to be involved in a niche social network from scratch.  For example, I have built my own social network for marketers and salespeople called BuyerSteps.  I created BuyerSteps as a way for other professionals to join in a conversation around the 21^st century buyer.  So, Ning represents a way to build a community.

In the case of Ulitzer, as a writer I am focused on getting readers from within an existing audience.  There are already thousands of readers coming to the Ulitzer site, so if they are interested in my topics such as marketing, they will find my articles as well as others.  Ulitzer allows the writer the ability to set up a feed coming from another site, so it can be a write once, publish twice strategy.  You just have to give Ulitzer a couple of hours to upload a new article you wrote on a different site.

Ning
Ning allows you to very easily construct the framework for a community for free with Lego-like ease of use.  You can easily blog, post presentations, videos, photos, invite friends, contribute to forums and manage your experience.  As the website's administrator, you can restrict certain people who don't fit your profile and set it up so that you must approve all blog posts.  What amazes me the most is how easy it is to add videos and additional boxes for almost any kind of content.  The site is very web-smart from an application standpoint.

What I have also done is added a widget from Twitter and LinkedIn's Question and Answer section.  In a very short period of time, you can have a robust set of capabilities up and running for all of your members.

Using premium services that are offered, Ning allows you to turn off Adwords for $24.95 a month as well as rename the site to whatever URL you want for $4.95 a month which I do.  The website administrator can also remove the Ning promotion link for $24.95 a month.  Until you have thousands of users, there is little financial reason to spend another $50 a month to turn off Adwords and the Ning promotion link.

Ning also makes it easy for you to have Google Analytics track your website.  Ning has over 150 applications that the user can add to their experience with the largest group being games.

You can also define your user profile questions and modify the site's appearance.  As a community tool, there's not much to complain about on Ning except that the administrator needs to work at building their own audience.  Just like Twitter, unless the community builder already has a large following and presence from an outside source, it will take patience and discipline to get your thoughts in front of a lot of people.

According to Quantcast, 7.5 million users a month go to Ning which certainly speaks to the needs of the long tail of community.  Any small business or affinity group that wants to build a community site without spending a large amount of time or money can be using the Ning platform for free in less than an hour.

Ulitzer
This is a terrific site for tapping into existing readers.  Ulitzer doesn't force me to drive users to the site since the core value of the site is that many authors are contributing.  The core value of the site is not to build a social network, but to provide pithy content to an information-hungry audience which at this point seems pretty technology-based.  In just over ten days, I had thousands of readers of my articles mainly on marketing and sales.  It would be nearly impossible to get that at Ning in ten days for a new community site.

The site's functionality is solid for a writer in regard to posting an article and then choosing which topics it should go under.  It seems the biggest challenge for Ulitzer will be how they handle editorial control.  If I am the editor of a topic, it's not clear to me that I control the editorial content.  When I go to some of the topics, I know there are stories that fit under the topic better than what I am seeing, but I'm not sure what to do about that.

In the management panel of the experience for the writer, I can edit my story and view my story prior to it being posted.  From a pure housekeeping standpoint, I hope they add the ability to delete my story from the management console at some point.  Ulitzer doesn't publish the story unless I submit it, but I would still like to take it off of the console.  Facts change and it would be great to kill a story if the writer could.  For instance, I started one story and decided not to publish it because I changed my mind.  That story is still sitting in the management console because I can't delete it.

What I really like about Ulitzer are the internal analytics.  I can see which of my articles is getting the most views.  Not only does it make me feel good when I see the number, it allows me to do research my own articles in regard to what the readers like.  This helps guide the writer for future articles which is good insight.

I think the author description area is feature-rich.  It makes it easy for the author to describe themselves, add a bio and choose tags for their stories.  You can also pick your favorite topics and submit your stories to those topics to help readers find them.  Finally, you can add your Google Adsense number if you want to make Adsense revenue, but I find this business proposition less than compelling.

If one of your goals is to get found through the search engines, it appears Ulitzer has a better case than Ning based on my limited analysis.  When I searched for a few of my articles using a few words out of the title, it was Ulitzer and its group of publications that presented the same articles I had placed on Ning.  So if exposure and the ability to be found is important to you, Ulitzer seems to be the superior site.

Ulitzer is early in its growing usage and doesn't see anywhere near the overall traffic that Ning does.  However, if you have just decided to start writing and are looking to grow as a writer while Ulitzer's audience does, this looks to be a good place to post your articles.  It should be pointed out that writing on Ulitzer is free once you are approved.  I think Ulitzer is on to something and as a contributing writer, I hope it can continue to grow.

My bottom line
Use both.  If you are a member of a social network on Ning and like to write, using Ulitzer too allows you to participate in your social network while enjoying the existing audience from Ulitzer.   Don't pit one against the other, but use both in your social media strategy.  That's smart 21st century awareness for you and your organization.

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