Palo Alto, Calif. - Ning on Tuesday announced the launch of a new version of its free platform that allows anyone to create their own online social network.

Users can mix and match features like videos, photos, music, forums, profiles and blogs, and make their social networks either public or private.

While Palo Alto, Calif.-based Ning reserves the right to run ads on the networks, users can buy the rights to run their own ads or make their networks ad free for $19.95 per month.

"Today's social networking services are fantastic, but they are very similar in approach to AOL, Compuserve, and Prodigy in the early nineties. They have a fixed and rigid view of what people can do," said Ning co-founder and CTO Marc Andreessen.

"We built Ning to give everyone the opportunity to create the exact right social network for them and their community -- whatever and whomever they define that to be," added Ning co-founder and CEO Gina Bianchini.

The original version of the Ning platform, launched a year ago, now claims 30,000 social networks and registered users in 176 countries.

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