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After impressing almost no one for so, so long, Ning has relaunched and reclaimed the hearts and minds of techbloggers. Ning allows the free construction of Facebookesque social networks, customizable with a variety of content and content sources. Construction tools are dead easy, using a drag-and-drop layout similar to Typepad. Ning — largely funded by Netscape founder Marc Andreessen and cofounded by Web 2.0 hottie Gina Bianchini — is banking on the contextual ad market to support the site (though subscribers can sell their own ads by forking over a few bucks). Fortunately for nostalgia's sake, some of Ning's early triumphs remain intact — for example, Who Is a Bigger Douche.