Ning

OK, this I like, although I want to play around with the skin a bit.

A Ning is easy to set up, offers many features - such as an events calendar, photos, and videos - that would be great in a work environment, and has an administrative passcode so that only selected people can control the content. If you worked in a place that could spend a great deal of money on a website, then a Ning might seem redundant. But if you weren't able to spend a large section of your budget on a site, or wanted an internal system independent of a public site, then a Ning would be a great option. Since you can restrict access to an internal group, there might be great functionality for a department, unit, or working group.

Say for example your working group had a project on a timeline. You could track progress and meetings on the events calendar, set up blog posts of meeting minutes and results, upload pictures of the project if applicable, upload screencasts and video demonstrations, etc. You'd also have a living document of the process if anyone wanted to check your progress.

In a PL setting, you often have adult users attempting to conduct business from the library. A Ning would be a great tool to offer them as well, because it would give them another kind of internet 'presence' as well as a way to organize and network.

Aside from the graphics, I don't really see a downside. Again, impressed with the easy set-up and the 'drag-and-drop' functions. I need to check how easy it is to edit what you've got once you've committed - but if that checks out, I'm all for it!