Thanks to this timely post by Michael Fergusson, I learned about two important events that took place in the world of social networks in recent days:

-Cisco jumped in the social networking game: through the acquisition of a social network design firm (Five Across) and a not-so-well-known social networking site (tribe.net), they plan to “help large corporate clients create services resembling MySpace or YouTube to bring their customers together online.”

-Ning, the new startup by Internet boom’s posterchild Marc Andressen, was launched on February 27. As mentioned on the New York Times, Ning is “a one-stop shop catering to this growing interest in social networks” or simply put, a web site to allow you to create your own social network. Here’s a fascinating video courtesy of Ning themselves, showing the evolution of the networks in the course of the first day alone…

As of today, I joined the Ning cloud with a Social Network for Hispanic Diabetics I created. It took me (no kidding) about 10 minutes in total to put together: talk about a quick learning curve!