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 JW Najarian on April 16, 2010 at 5:35pm
My first thought is that Jason is moving too quickly. There are so many ways to make money with Ning, just by scaling back services not getting rid of all of them. Business users have been trying to get Ning to set up a hiearchy of free vs. premium members and would pay for that. More than one home page would be a great way to make more $$, limiting pages or notes, blog entries or just space.

KickApps is still free if you want to move, but as you grow you will be charged which is fair.

After reading countless posts from users with incredible suggestions; I have a hard time believeing that this course is the best and most thought out.

I will pay, but I think that Ning may be flipping off the very users that made Ning a powerhouse to begin with. (No I am not talking about the first porn sites). I mean that all the free sites got this thing going. There were others like KickApps and Fubar and a couple of others that I can't recall, but Ning soared to the top and now they want to chuck the users that got them there?!

Also you can check out VBulletin and Joomla. Wordpress is also becoming quite popular... These take some work of course.

Thouth I seem to disagree with Ning from time to time, I love Ning and will pay.
Comment by JenSocial on April 16, 2010 at 5:26pm
Beyond The Horizons,
No, unfortunately I do not know of a quick way to backup content. I'm hoping Ning will offer this in some format. My reservation on the possibilities is "ownership of content", i.e. does the NC own it, or the member who posted it? See what I mean?
We should hear more from Ning in the coming 2 weeks.
Best,
Jen
Comment by Beyond The Horizons on April 16, 2010 at 3:56pm
Question Jen??? HOW can I save the written posts and others info, not the member data, I've done that...I want to save posts, prayer request, poetry etc to my computer..Is that possible? Without alot of copy paste? Carpol tunnel is acting up...too much computer time now...
Comment by Living On Love on April 16, 2010 at 3:54pm
Comment by Beyond The Horizons on April 16, 2010 at 3:14pm
I am lookign into webs.com also, for my site is a small not for profit minsitry website for community networking of folks in the prison ministires and street ministires. we do not have alot of money, hey, who does these days...and this 'ning thing' seemed to be a God send, now I wonder....I wish I had begun somewhere else. I am diasbled, on a small fixed income and this is one enjoyment I get, helping others with prayer request, ect...I am dissapointed, but I do know when one door closes, another one will open... and keep the door shut, no turning back..as they say. I wish money was not the issue here. There are alternatives to getting rid of the free sites...like allowing testing for premium services on the free sites, etc... someone is not thinking too clearly, only with their wallet here.
Comment by Creating Empires on April 16, 2010 at 2:59pm
And check out the welcome this website has on its front page!!

http://www.spruz.com/
Comment by Creating Empires on April 16, 2010 at 2:50pm
Comment by 50's Chatters on April 16, 2010 at 2:43pm
I guess I could scream and holler...but as with all things ..money rules..I started my site because Myspace got rid of the chat rooms and my friends needed a place to go so we could all chat..I have learned an enormous amount of code writing and such and have developed new friendships..Integrety doesn't seem to be a NING word...and once again the "little" ppl get pushed aside and insulted to boot..To think that because I don't pay for the bells & whistles, i am insignificant to the organization..never mind the many ppl who started sites because I introduced them to this format...I have a scheduled chat for saturday posted on the 50's Chatters FB page and told everyone it's free to join..so now because of the higher ups my word has been tarnished and my honor is in jeopardy..I can't afford to pay for this..I did not develop my site to make money..silly me..maybe I will rethink my life and decide that happiness comes in the form of the wallet and how much I can get...I am not surprised by this...now to prepare the statement I have to send out to all my members and to those on FB who are fans thinking about joining......
Comment by DarkMoonCircle on April 16, 2010 at 1:50pm
Wonder when the boot will fall lol and how long we will have to transfer if we do that and wonder after you get premium just how much it will go up after all this LOL
Comment by Janet Marston, Artist on April 16, 2010 at 1:47pm
webs.com has free sites available also, similar to NING

I know with the economy the way it is, most of us cannot afford to have another bill to pay for - do what you need to do

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