Jakob Nielson’s “Top Web Mistakes of 2005” is now out, and at number seven is:

Cumbersome Forms
People complained about numerous form-related problems. The basic issue? Forms are used too often on the Web and tend to be too big, featuring too many unnecessary questions and options.

Which segues nicely into the next new thing, which is Ning.

Ning is a free online service (or, as we like to call it, a Playground) for building and using social applications.

Why does your signup form say that my username has to be six characters or more when there are loads of people in the userlist with fewer than that? Why do you want to know which country I’m in and my postcode? Get off my back, stalker-freaks.

Anyway, quite apart from the inane bit about being “a Playground” Ning seems vaguely interesting, but certainly not massively exciting (certainly not as exciting as the hyperbole being spouted a few months ago about the NEW TOP-SECRET STARTUP!!!!!! which was 24-hour Laundry and is now Ning would have led you to believe). A novel social-coding experiment at least. If you’re a developer you might be interested once they’ve started giving everyone developer rights in a couple of months’ time.