Robert Robbins

I'm finally working on a project with the potential to be a really high profile web site. I've offered my services as a volunteer programmer to the http://www.vloggerheads.com web site which is being built on the Ning social networking platform. This site is an attempt by prominent vloggers from YouTube and LiveVideo to take control of their community.

Vloggers have been plagued by trolls, hackers, haters, and cyberbullies who are allowed to run amuck on the video sharing sites. This has been a major problem for a very long time and the sites where people vlog have ignored the frequent complaints from their users. Vloggers feel unappreciated. They don't think the video sharing sites are interested in creating a safe environment for the community. I've been outraged over the shoddy customer service and total indifference to the user base for quite some time. YouTube is like a convenience store in a bad section of town where the business owner allows hoodlums to lounge outside the store and harass its customers. The hoodlums are even allowed inside the store to give the customers grief as they shop and a hoodlum may even become customer of the month. Trolls have been featured on YouTube!

This has led to a revolt among the user base. It is an inspiring example of the collaboration that social networking is said to foster. Vloggers have come together to plan their own video sharing site that will provide a safe environment to do what they love to do. Personally, if I was managing a web site and my user base left en masse to form their own site out of disgust with how I was running things, I would feel professionally mortified.

The Ning social networking platform is surprisingly customizable. They provide more than the usual XML and JSON data feeds as an API. You can actually script your site in PHP. They don't use a proper database though. You have to add custom developer attributes to a set number of content objects to extend their data schema. Ning rolled their own Model View Controller framework. My brief study of CakePHP was useful in understanding this architecture but I still need to brush up on my PHP. Ning also uses the Dojo JavaScript toolkit which is worth studying. So far I have learned enough on this project to make it well worth my time.

As far as ASP.NET goes, the only interesting aspect to the project so far has been using PHP as a SOAP client to an ASP.NET web service. This proved to be tricky because you must specify the data type of the parameters in PHP and send them as an associative array.

Although the Ning site has energized the community by providing it with a sense of ownership and control, there is still an awareness that basing the site on Ning could be limiting. Nobody wants to be at the mercy of another indifferent social networking site that will not enforce its terms of service. I've already recommended http://www.codeplex.com/videoshow as a potential vlogger platform but it lacks any social networking features and I don't relish the prospect of building that from scratch.