Ning Phasing out Free Sites - What Are Your Thoughts?

Today, Ning announced a monumental change in it's business plan. This is good news and bad news. For premium networks, it's probably good news; in that, it's what most premium networks thought they were investing in, in the first place. It will make the premium Ning Networks closer to white label, and likely more valuable assets. It is bad news and extremely sad for some free Ning Networks. Here's an excerpt from the announcement by Ning's CEO - Jason Rosenthal:


When I became CEO 30 days ago, I told you I would take a hard look at our business. This process has brought real clarity to what's working, what's not, and what we need to do now
to make Ning a big success.


My main conclusion is that we need to double down on our premium services
business. Our Premium Ning Networks like Friends or Enemies, Linkin
Park, Shred or Die, Pickens Plan, and tens of thousands of others both
drive 75% of our monthly US traffic, and those Network Creators need and
will pay for many more services and features from us.


So, we are going to change our strategy to
devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture
this big opportunity. We will phase out our free service. Existing
free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for
premium services, or transition off of Ning. We will judge ourselves by
our ability to enable and power Premium Ning Networks at huge scale.
And all of our product development capability will be devoted to making
paying Network Creators extremely happy.

Full Story


New Group: Alternative Solutions to Ning


Please offer and discuss possible solutions, for owners of free Ning Networks. And most of all, let's all offer encouragement to our fellow Ning Network Creators.


UPDATE FROM NING CEO: JASON ROSENTHAL:

ORIGINAL STORY HERE - - Ning Update: Rolling Out Full Details May 4th

Hi Everyone,


As many of you know, we made a decision yesterday to focus 100% of the company on enhancing the features and services we offer to paying Ning Creators. The tens of thousands of you who already use our paid
service represent over 75% of our traffic, and we’ve heard repeatedly
from you ways that we can deliver a killer service to help make your
Ning Network more effective. Some examples of things we are working on
that you’ve asked for include new APIs, a new mobile experience and new
advertising and revenue opportunities.


As part of this change, we’ll be phasing out our free service. On May 4, 2010, we will share with you all of the details of our new offering, including features and price points, through a series of blog
posts, emails, and conference calls. We recognize that there are many
active Ning Networks for teachers, small non-profits, and individuals
and it's our goal to have a set of product and pricing options that will
make sense for all of them. For Ning Creators using our free service who
choose to move to another service, we will off a migration path and
time to make that change. We will still continue to allow free trials
and test networks on the Ning Platform.


We look forward to talking to you further on May 4th.


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Comment by JenSocial on April 15, 2010 at 4:42pm
I gotta say too, I have great compassion for all the Ning Employees who were let go today. That had to have been a terrible shock. So many of them worked around the clock, so dedicated it's unbelievable. I hope they know how much a lot of us appreciated all their hard work.
Comment by JenSocial on April 15, 2010 at 4:37pm
AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.com ,
I agree on the trial period offer. I so hope that Ning offers this, and that the transition is a good and reasonable amount of time, for all.
Best,
Jen
Comment by AutomotiveDigitalMarketing.com on April 15, 2010 at 4:28pm
I think this is a move that will drive Ning in the right direction... However, I would like to see them offer newbies a free network site similar to the current process for a limited time period as a trial offer. I set up many Ning Networks as business communities for clients and have never used the free versions, preferring to use my own domain names and strip out the ads and Ning promotional links, so this will probably benefit me... Plus, the stats cited by the new CEO are a compelling reason for Ning network creators who use the paid services to WANT Ning to direct more resources to our needs.

But I still think Gina was a much hotter CEO than the new Ning CEO!
Comment by JenSocial on April 15, 2010 at 4:18pm
Hey Texas Social Network,
The funny characters you see like $#@%! is just a filter I have installed on this site that's a word filter. It's probably filtering out something that doesn't need to be filtered. If you can spell it with spaces, I'll know what it is, and can remove the word. Sorry about that.
Jen
Comment by Our Great Pets on April 15, 2010 at 4:14pm
White Lable, Black Lable,
I'm am sick to death. Guess we all have been black listed. Yes all the blood, sweat and tiers. It has taken me 6 months. I don't have 197 on my staff I have 1 (me). Have to have money to make money. I moved my network from Joomla in Nov. Now what. 1st. They need to give us what the premium price will be so we can make a choice to stay or go. 2nd. Provide us with a list of other networks that would love to have use. 3rd. Give us the time to move. What's the dead line? Tomorrow? The right thing to do is at least grandfather us all in and give the freebies and least 6 months to start paying the premium or move.

As far a the spam issue which has been the biggest since I have been on board, they need to give the control back to the creators and admin. Do they think we are just here sitting on the couch watching soaps. We all get a email as soon as a member does anything on the site and can jump in and stop what is not wanted. I myself have had to set up 2 dummy accts. just to get around and have a on going help ticket since mid Feb. that is still an issue. (I can not send invites from my admin acct.) By Ning blocking creators, admin and members, they are in control of our content on our sites, not the creators.

I was so in Love with Ning. This is just like my man telling me it's over and he is moving on with some bimbo that has more money!!!!!!!!!! DumbDates.com
Comment by Louis Jeffries on April 15, 2010 at 4:09pm
The the cost effectiveness of having a premium ning site is just not there. Plus the sites do not generate the traffic a wordpress site would. Frankly I would not pay for a site that I do not have control over. That is why there is a place for the free sites. Do you think wordpress would eliminate their free sites in favor of the paid. No, the key is to make the paid sites more valuable to make the free sites convert. I do not see that. Maybe if I were a large organization the the costs would justify it, the prices they ask for are too much for the smaller start up business.
Comment by Houston Volleyball on April 15, 2010 at 4:06pm
I am just starting to spread the word with my site i do pay for some premium services waht does this mean for me?
Comment by OregonShout _YoUNITY on April 15, 2010 at 4:05pm
I agree with the statement below...we have worked soooo hard...on all our sites.
This is an serious infringement to the Original plan of free networks on Ning~ to give the little person a chance to establish a working plan and community involvement..I have felt lie I should put everything over to the Social G- type of plan...and pay a little bit and get more...So the Elite are taking Over All the 2.0 groups..Truly a Patriot-act-Tyrannical move to say the least..

When Ning got the $60 Million Influx of cash investment last year,.. I knew it would be a matter of time...Shalom
Comment by Magic Happens on April 15, 2010 at 4:03pm
One more thing to feed the thoughts. With the paid ning networks, why do they have donation buttons? Do they think each site is going to donate to each other to stay afloat. Not likely. If it is so rasonable then what's with the donations? Well, may be that will brighten Ning up. When they go down, l hope it is in the hole and they need to pay to get out.
Comment by Hugh Simpson on April 15, 2010 at 3:53pm
As a 12 YEAR vet of Internet Marketing and teacher of Web 2 Marketing for the past three years and a serial entrepreneur you are going to find that you are making a HUGE mistake! This leads me to also believe you do not have the finances to continue as the REAL reason for doing this! You like Facebook will find that others will pull away from Ning because of your change of your business model. This is NOT the way to go and I grant you your decision will be on TechCrunch in the next few minutes as I beta test for them.

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