The Globe and Mail has a story, Andreessen gets into social networking, on Ning, a “platform” for creating your own social network. It’s like an open FaceBook that lets you create a network for your family or for a class. You can create private or public networks; the public ones are visible and you can join them. You can pay Ning to make money off ads and for other services. Andreessen is, of course, the famous founder of Netscape. (So this is what he is up to now.)
Ning has a nice simple interface for choosing what you want on the portal. You drag the modules you want to the different columns. It lets you see what you can have and lets you arrange what you want.