Ning is dead...... long live GROU.PS(BETA)!

I am not sure if I am late to the party..... the answer here is, probably yes I am. However it was only today thanks to a participant in one of our online workshops who has been working with net guru Julie Lindsay. We have had groups using Ning sites for some time, with the soon to be implemented pricing structure for Ning many of us have been looking for what next......... .
Today it came with GROU.PS BETA - which describes itself as:

GROU.PS is a do-it-yourself social networking platform that allows people to come together and form interactive communities around a shared interest or affiliation. The functionality of any online group is limited only by the members’ collective imagination and ambition. The GROU.PS platform is used to create a wide variety of community sites, including online gaming forums, e-learning classrooms, fan clubs, charity fundraising campaigns, college alumni societies, and event planning portals. In short, any organization seeking to aggregate and organize people online can greatly improve its effectiveness, engagement and appeal by migrating to the GROU.PS platform. By giving any user the ability to create an easy-to-use, yet powerful, social network, GROU.PS is propelling online collaboration, communication and content sharing in a new socially-aware direction.

The company is privately held and headquartered in Palo Alto, CA with development offices in Istanbul, Turkey. GROU.PS was founded in early 2006 by Emre Sokullu. The site has more than 3 million registered members. The company is backed by Golden Horn Ventures.

Grou.ps offers a home for your Ning site

For those familiar with Ning will recognise the header section titles as they correspond exactly. Once you create your grou.ps site you can simply copy across your Ning group.
Apologies if this is old news.... it was news to me!