I was poking around Ning , the social network site co-founded by Marc Andreessen of Netscape fame, and noticed that the Cisco community has embraced Ning. The site's shtick is that you can build your own Facebook on Ning, keeping out the general riffraff that might encroach on a more general social network site like that. Among the Cisco-oriented groups on Ning:

* Cisco Brokers for network equipment resellers

*  Cisco Help , where certified Cisco workers help each other out

* Cisco Users Group (Dallas/Fort Worth) 

* Cisco Leadership Fellows ....for smarty pants 

* Six Degrees of Cisco , which is probably what it sounds like 

For more on Ning, see NW columnist Mark Gibbs's take, plus this recent story on hackers using Ning to convene.

Bob Brown

bbrown@nww.com