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.


Views: 484

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Comment by Transcription n Rewriting on April 16, 2010 at 2:52am
Comment by free4free.ning.com on April 16, 2010 at 2:49am
This is an old and bad smelled PIZZA in new Box
In a practical World nothing is "FREE"
Only "Give" and "Take" policy will survive.
Those who can't afford this, must prefer the "END"
Comment by Transcription n Rewriting on April 16, 2010 at 2:00am
So where are you taking your content?
Need solutions rather than intellectualization on come business owners decision - so he wants $$ for his strip - so where we taking our shop?im looking 7 any help would be great:
http://www.similarsites.com/sites-like/ning.com
Comment by JenSocial on April 16, 2010 at 1:57am
Hi Tranny,
I know this is horrible for a lot of people. I'm scrambling too, trying to figure out what I can do to help so many friends.
Best to you,
Jen
Comment by JenSocial on April 16, 2010 at 1:26am
Anything I hear, I will definitely share with all of you. Hang tight everyone. We need to know what constitutes a premium network, first.
Best,
Jen
Comment by Kats Korner Of Friendz on April 16, 2010 at 1:26am
makes me sad to know once some of us that have come here looking for place to make new friends and have sites for them to join and we make friends i own 3 main sites only one closing as of in few days i can not afford the premium fees they are talking about i know for fact there are alot ning free sites here out the premuim sites that cant afford to pay for their sites as much i am not able to if ning decides to phase us out where will we go if we cant afford what they decide i have one site not even yr old that will be in July i wish they can make it work everyone not just paid sites i was on site while back it did the samething not fair to the ones you can pay for things in bad times or whatever the their situations i have 30 or 40 members on one site and 20or 22 on my other 2 sites alot mebers be upset they had leave ning due to phasing out free services to what we are or have the right use because premium members want more than us .
Comment by Mukesh Parth on April 16, 2010 at 1:25am
Thanks for message
glad to know that today
Comment by elsodev on April 16, 2010 at 1:06am
It's not Ning Directory plans , Ning Directory is just a network . Its Ning .
Comment by elsodev on April 16, 2010 at 12:36am
Owh no , i totally disagree . Ning should change its premium plan and make more advertising for thier new premium plan but not remove all free ning networks .
Comment by Magick Light (Brigit Aradiawolf) on April 16, 2010 at 12:35am
Brigit Aradiawolf (Creator of Magick Light)

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