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 Happens on April 15, 2010 at 3:52pm
l kind of thought this would happen because of the spam business, get rid of the free ning network by saying they were spamming, locking creators and administrators out of all ning network for a software that is not good in the first place for a website. This software acts like a e-mail account .

And people creating networks and building friendships, making ning money just the same, And the paid ning creators still have ning logos on their sites. l think that this is a lot of crap and that ning with go the way most social networks went, Most social networks were build on free accounts, then they like Yahoo, wanted to make big bucks using people. And l do really believe that Ning will bite the dust.

With all the free accounts, and people being treated like this will only give Ning a big black letter day in history. There are more free accounts members then the paid ones, what does ning thinks all these people are going to do, talk good about a wonderful site, no, they are most likely going to pass the word around about ning being money grabbing hogs. This is just another way for poor people to suffer.

They might set the price low to start with, but the price will go up. Hey! any one can see this coming. Even if it was ten dolloars a year, it will be hundreds next year to keep the network. Lay down with dogs, you wake up with fleas. l am mad hurt and have to tell my members. Most will leave right away.
Comment by cat Lawford on April 15, 2010 at 3:47pm
I wrote to NING when I first set up a site because I felt it was almost too good to be true. I love NING. I basically asked will this always be available and they assured me it would always be there. I have, like so many others put so much work into it and also set up sites that are not 'mine' but a resource for others, so no monetary gains of any description to be made for me. I'd not be willing to pay for all 3 sites - especially the two that I just started and administer for the greater good. I am gutted but are we privy, yet, to what the costs might be? As has been stated - if NING had set this up from the beginning then fine, and maybe start to charge yet - to new sites (at least they know from the off), but this is not fair to loyal members.
Comment by JenSocial on April 15, 2010 at 3:47pm
Tuddland,
Thanks. ;-) But, I should have remembered.
Best,
Jen
Comment by JenSocial on April 15, 2010 at 3:46pm
Roadhouse Rockers,
You are correct, LOL. I would have made it 2 different entities from day one - - true white label and free, and nothing to do with each other.
Best,
Jen
Comment by JenSocial on April 15, 2010 at 3:45pm
I wish I had started this in a forum discussion, so we could reply to each other. Sorry for that dumb decision. I completely forgot we didn't have the "reply" to each other, within a blog.
Comment by Laura on April 15, 2010 at 3:42pm
EVIL GREED STRIKES AGAIN!
Comment by Scarlett Moon on April 15, 2010 at 3:23pm
That is also a concern..what happens if some roll over and accept the pay service and then Ning loses a nice chunk of their base because they were greedy? Will they then have to rethink a new way to make up for the loss in dollars of those people? Would be nice if we were given some facts. It would also be nice to appreciate the folks that made Ning great.
Comment by TeamCircle on April 15, 2010 at 3:20pm
Well here's the thing. No mention of what changes and charges will pertain to the "Premium" services, and no reason to think once people have been forced to either pay or lose their work, then they are captive to whatever plan Ning puts into play to gouge them into the future.

Not happy.
Comment by RoadHouse Rockers on April 15, 2010 at 3:19pm
Jen i do know you would not come up with something like this idea to bad you are not in charge lol;-) killing the grassroot level that made NIng what is is today is beyond stupid its buziness financial suicide !!
Comment by Healthy Food & Fitness Bargains on April 15, 2010 at 3:18pm
Very bad move. You have so many people who already put in endless time and effort to build their network, and now Ning.com want to do this abrupt change. This is going to put a bad taste in the mouths of network creators and drum up bad publicity. It is one thing if Ning.com started off with this rule of having no free networks..or if it had done this after a short period of being a free service...but this abrupt change here suggests that Ning.com has deeply "mishandled" their business. You can't get away with this kind of move without a backlash that will hurt the bottom line. If you want to get more money, offer better premium services...build on what you have that people will pay for. Ning.com may say that they do offer great premium service...if they did, then they would have the money coming in to support a network that offers free and paid service. Offering the "freemium" is the best business model, as you open your business to the general public, and then offer a paid service to receive better services. If you want more money...beef up the premium without canceling the free. Ning.com is in a competition heat with Facebook and other growing social networks/social media businesses. This move on their part will make a lot of people go to other networks/social media that handle their customers differently. As far as having problems with spammers, as mentioned before as one of the causes for this change....spammers are a nuisance, but a reality. You will always have spammers...but penalize everyone else? What this will do is to motivate and spur other social media to do what Ning.com looks like can not do...offer a quality freemium service and handle their business better..which means respecting all customers and not cut them off at the knees.

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