Last week, I discussed some ways that you might use a social network. Ning is a great place to get started!

Ning allows you to fully customize your screen, which means that in addition to choosing colors, you can also use your own logo and other images. You can invite and restrict the members of your group, offer profile pages for each member and even keep your entire network private. You can post multimedia content, blog posts, discussion boards and more. Ning currently supports multiple languages, too! Click here for complete information on Ning and what it does. You can learn more about the company here.

Because you can customize Ning, there are many ways to implement this social framework as a useful editorial tool. For example, you could use Ning as part of your sports coverage. You might create a network for cricket, posting information about individual teams as well as coverage from your newspaper, broadcast station or Web site. Users could then follow all of your coverage, make other connections and develop their own user-generated content – that your organization could vet – using that platform.

Ning can also be used as a training tool. You could easily create a network just for your organization, and post tip-sheets, how-to guides, writing/editing/production guidelines and more. You can turn your Power Point training presentations into Quicktime videos and archive them all at Ning. Your work colleagues could post their ideas, collaborations and more using a closed network.

What about reporting? Creating a hyperlocal group of sources who might feed you information? Using Ning as an office intranet? The NewsTools2008 conference is even using Ning to help organize its upcoming meeting.

Yes, this is a social network. But it's not necessarily like MySpace or Facebook. Just as Web sites come in many different flavors, so too can social networks.