Mark Hendrickson, the new writer over at Techcrunch did some very valuable analysis today in his post “9 Ways to Build Your Own Social Network“. They write:

“We have taken a sample of nine of these companies - Ning, KickApps, CrowdVine, GoingOn, CollectiveX, Me.com, PeopleAggregator, Haystack, and ONEsite - all of which provide free baseline services, and reviewed them individually below. We have also included the chart on the right summarizing all of these companies’ offerings. Credit for initial research into these companies goes to Jeremiah Owyang who compiled a comprehensive list of white label social networking services.”

It’s really interesting to see the competitive matrix they created of those select companies. They also link to my comprehensive list, which is far more than 9, it’s over 60 now. I wish I had more time to do research like this, but in reality, that would be a different type of job.

Thanks for crediting me Mark, be sure to check out my other Industry Indexe lists for future market analysis. Friends, here’s a living example of paying yourself first, and one thing leads to another.

Update: It’s interesting that there’s over 1000 people visiting that page in just a few hours.