The 12 Most Creative Minds Of 2008

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Ning, like many Web 2.0 companies -- Google, PayPal, YouTube, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, Digg, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Flickr -- is powered by viral loops. But it was designed specifically to exploit them. The brainchild of former Goldman Sachs investment banker Gina Bianchini and celebrity geek Marc Andreessen, Ning has grown automagically from the moment it launched -- providing a free platform for do-it-yourself social networks -- in February 2007. By August there were 80,000 Ning nets and as 2007 ended, there were 150,000. At the end of 2008 there are more than 500,000. The company estimates that by New Year's Eve 2010 it will host some 4 million social networks, with tens of millions of members, serving up billions of page views daily. "It's the power of compounding, predictable growth rates," Bianchini says.

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