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 MYSTICMOONS on April 15, 2010 at 5:44pm
Exactally what constitutes a Premium Service? Mysticmoons pays for extra storage and bandwidth and is also paid into the Ning Top 100 Communities. My other two communities do not yet have premium services. Now members would donate $1.00 a month for this, but thats not the point. I have been with Ning for years and this really is the last straw. With taking the inviting friends away, and al the other horrid "Improvements" that Ning has stung each one of us with, I am not sure that I will continue with Ning. The communities that sit on The Witches Council will have the chance to come with me and set up with what I think I am going to do.
I am so very sorry to each and everyone of you that this is occuringm but money talks and I suppose we all walk.

Many Blessings
LadyKs

Mysticmoons
The Witches Council
The Magickal Mall

and the many communities that sit on The Witches Council
Comment by Scarlett Moon on April 15, 2010 at 5:31pm
Well you can bet your butt this creator if she leaves will deconstruct her network before I let anyone let alone Ning keep it! BULL is what that is. And don't think I won't do it! Nobody keeps my stuff especially when it is the thoughts and opinions of myself and my members..so really isn't that illegal?? I OWN my content as do my members! PERIOD!
Comment by saveNaturefree on April 15, 2010 at 5:26pm
A court would decide in favour of the customer who has been providing ning with free advertising for years..
Comment by RoadHouse Rockers on April 15, 2010 at 5:25pm
this time (for the ones that remember LiveDigital) we wont get taken in for a ride we will if necessary do a class action recourse to make Ning take down all our content and make it available for download WAY before they shut our nets down . We after all helped to make Ning what it is code wise and apps wise and we will not lay down and let Ning sell
their code to the highest bidder like LiveDigital and than make us use beta while we all scramble to get OUR MEDIAS Back from their servers lots of us have our own DOTCOM DOTNETS AND DOT ORGS to start with we were wooed by NING to use it for socialising portion of our already existing Commercial sites and now we are all getting shafted by the Ning latest hachett man to be!
my own dotcom site got (commercial site 1+million hits last year so i am not here to win popularity contest of any kind as you would imagine ;-)
Comment by saveNaturefree on April 15, 2010 at 5:22pm
Under the law to offer something like a website free which a customer will build up with value then years later after the customer has amassed a following of friends and members, tell the customer they have to pay to keep the website, is both deception and misconduct of honest business practices.
Most sites that have to move will go look for another free service on google.
Comment by magic realm on April 15, 2010 at 5:22pm
and where ever you go mrs p, me and your friends will be there so we dont need ning
Comment by Scarlett Moon on April 15, 2010 at 5:19pm
Every one of us needs to tell other network Creators to get in here and put in their opinions. Maybe just maybe someone will listen..

I am already looking into other free sites as well as creating my own and having my own server. I hope Ning is ready for a mass migration out of here! You can also count on word getting around about Ning practices as well as the problems we've endured because bad news sure travels fast. Have fun trying to grow Ning with all that bad press.

I am really hoping Ning will do the honorable thing and grandfather the old Ning networks. The real issues Ning should be working on are dead networks with no activity and inactive profiles. Getting rid of the garbage would probably reduce costs for you! Oh but I see the problem..that would affect the stats..and here we go around again....numbers, dollar and stats..oh my!
Comment by Magic Happens on April 15, 2010 at 5:18pm
Well, we will only get answers from other freebies. l am like the rest of you. l am hurt and mad.Maybe someone should start a freebie group to find answers.
Comment by Our Great Pets on April 15, 2010 at 5:14pm
And a few others.

spruz.com and socialgo.com
Comment by magic realm on April 15, 2010 at 5:14pm
thanks texas social network, we should all leave ning

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