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 magic realm on April 16, 2010 at 10:54am
wackwalls not that great, but its good to have another site
Comment by Coming Together on April 16, 2010 at 10:49am
I have made many many friends on ning. I love my site and I don't think it is fair. Ning has been good to people to learn and share there knowledge with other people. I have had my (FREE) account with Ning since Aug. 2008 and now all of a sudden you are cutting us down. The way you are doing it is costing you a lot more than you think you will loss accounts. We also Advertise Business on my site.
I will not be staying with Ning I will make a website from Cox.
No
Love and Light from me
Comment by magic realm on April 16, 2010 at 10:48am
good point mrs p, ill give these other sites a test run
Comment by Scarlett Moon on April 16, 2010 at 10:43am
I refuse to be at the mercy of Ning..I am actively seeking out a new home and think I've found it. It would be prudent for everyone to be proactive and do the same. Besides say we stay and they listen. What happens if we get shut out of our site or who knows what else happens? I prefer to have a backup anyway.

Another thing..Ias I've been looking i've noticed that at the very least wackwall has placed a button that specifiaclly says "affected by Ning Distaster" for those of us looking for a new home. These other sites want us..while Ning doesn't. Isn't that interesting? Wake up Ning before you lose a huge chunk of your community!
Comment by Oh My Heartsie Girl on April 16, 2010 at 10:40am
I just checked out Wackwall, this might work for some, I am spolied are there any other platforms? I'm sure a search on google would bring up something. Let us know.
Comment by Transcription n Rewriting on April 16, 2010 at 10:39am
Love n Light - thx! i have started work on the trunity site & since I cant afford another setback from another "free' provider - i think i will go ahead and build a second back up on wackwall.
thx all for ur quick solutions.
I ofcourse am keenly awaiting to see what the ning pricing & features swill be eventually. I do suspect if they will do away with the free model entirely. They might just bring down the number of pages, or traffic bandwidth or such!
Well I m sure this isnt the last we have heard of nings decision & its outcomes.
Comment by magic realm on April 16, 2010 at 10:37am
im already joining new sites, screw ning!
Comment by Oh My Heartsie Girl on April 16, 2010 at 10:22am
I as a ning owner feel the same as a lot I have read about, in that there are many who have started these ning sites or joined a free ning site, in hopes they would be able to make connections and share their dream of starting their own business after many have lost jobs in the corporate world, or are starting new.

For our ning I do have the "Premium Service" (what it is at present) but feel this is unfair to those that cannot afford to go to this type of service.

I am not sure this was thought out by the creators of NING and the impact will have around the world, and how it will affect millions of people worldwide.

I dont have the answer and I am searching, and reading the posts makes sense to have a presence on Facebook, so if you havent I would suggest you start a place to migrate for your members you may currently have on your ning sites, yes there are not nearly the applications available but you will still have a place for you to communicate with your current members/customers/friends and who knows you may be able to aquire more attention there as well, I have.

For me I am going to look at this as a positive rather than a negative, and make sure that I do what I can to help other non paying ning owners a place or a way to help them. Working on some ideas and would like input. I will be watching and keeping up on the latest.

Thanks Karren Haller
Live Laugh and Love to Shop

PS Please find and follow, use Twitter, FB to get the word out.
This is a rebuttal to NING taking away the free nings and a petition to let NING know that those of us that have non-profit Nings, businesses Nings and have been using these platforms to start businesses as a spring board that we would hope they reconsider their position on doing away with "Free Status" for current ning owners/founders. Please take time to read and sign this petition and make your voice heard.

http://askmanny.com/2010/04/free-ning-no-more-my-two-cents/
Comment by EathActive on April 16, 2010 at 9:57am
As a business Ning can take that option if they want. But consider the move of Yahoo a few years ago. They too considered moving to all paid services, but realized they would really hurt financially because their advertising base would drop drastically.

Ning does a lot of advertising on "free" sites and with their userbase probably do quite well with that. But if they want to throw away what is essentially 'Money on the Table', that's their business. When their userbase leaves them in search of greener pastures, no doubt someone else will pick up where they left off, and hopefully do a much better job than what Ning has done.

Personally, I find Ning's servers slow, and their scripting leaves a lot to be desired in the way of funtionality and speed. I wish them the best of luck for Ning if they make this move, however I (and many others) feel that they can only end up going downhill after this and may end up dead in the water.
Comment by Tree Lindsay on April 16, 2010 at 9:53am
How cool is THAT!! Okay, I'm sold. LOL Thanks so much for bringing this to our attention, Leah!!

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