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 elsodev on April 16, 2010 at 8:36am
Lets complain it via Ning help center . Unity is Strength ! If everyone does , Ning will listen !
Lol but not spam .
Comment by SoBe ni 楚辺 に on April 16, 2010 at 8:33am
I forgot the important news. As of march 5, 2010:

Facebook Reach Profit 1 Billion Dollar

http://news.oonclinic.com/hot-news/facebook-reach-profit-1-billion-...

by NOT charging fees...
Comment by DarkMoonCircle on April 16, 2010 at 8:31am
tHIS IS REALLY SAD ESP WITH MANY EVEN OUT OF WORK BTWEEN JOBS WHO BARLY GET ENOUGH FOOD STAMPS LIKE ME IT IS JUST NOT RIGHT AND ONE WOULD HAVE TO PAY MONTHLY AUT DEDICTED , IT IS AND WE DONT KNWO THE TOTAL COST AND IF IT INCLUDES MORE SPACE ETCA

I am sorry this it comes down to just money Ning has been an outstanding place to connect as now I have my circle getting active and beging to grow lol Paganumbrella brought up good pointa and questions
Comment by Joanna MaGrath on April 16, 2010 at 8:31am
We Can All Moan, Groan, Whine, Complain and Express Ourselves How We May but WILL NING LISTEN…?

Instead of Wasting Our Energy Doing This How About We All Put Our Heads Together for the Position and Express How We Create Our Own Successful FREE Social Network Platform Where One Could Update to Premium Services to Off Set the Cost of the FREE Members.

We Have a Distinguished List of Individuals Who Have the Skills Needed to Produce This.

I Would Be Willing to Start the Ball Rolling but I Will Need a Few Partners. If You Are Up For the Challenge Lets DO IT…!

I Am Not In To Politics but POSITIVES. I Don’t Just Talk To Talk but I Take Care of Business.
Comment by SoBe ni 楚辺 に on April 16, 2010 at 8:30am
Look at this from the wide angle lens (you had better!). Facebook is the number one site in the entire world!(see "the facts" below) And there is no premium charged to any user. Get it?

I work in corporate computing, and it never ceases to amaze me how many high-paid professionals don't get it. They see with their very own eyes these wildly - I mean, there is nothing like Microsoft, Google and Facebook, anywhere in the history of business - they have these wondrous models of successful marketing management IN FRONT OF THEIR NOSES, and then...

After one month in the company, the make the decision to revert to some antiquated, non-functional business model, from, like Sears or Wards-pool your resources, cut the ballast, focus on the paying customer.

Wrong. And the thing is, it's NOT just an opinion.

Here are the stats (http://www.checkfacebook.com/)
# More than 400 million active users
# 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day
# More than 35 million users update their status each day
# More than 60 million status updates posted each day
# More than 3 billion photos uploaded to the site each month
# More than 5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each week
# More than 3.5 million events created each month
# More than 3 million active Pages on Facebook
# More than 1.5 million local businesses have active Pages on Facebook
# More than 20 million people become fans of Pages each day
# Pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans
Comment by Code Whacker on April 16, 2010 at 8:25am
Personal question Jen, you seem to think this is wrong I have personally found myself in your situation a few times in my life. I resigned both times, what are you going to do?
Comment by JenSocial on April 16, 2010 at 8:03am
Hi Pagan Umbrella,
We don't know yet (1) What constitutes premium, and (2) How long before things change. As soon as I know something, I'll let you all know. Also, I may change the whole face of this site to serve ALL, and not just the Ning platform. Hang around a while yet. This may be a good way to keep some friends together under one umbrella - - pun intended. ;-)
Hugs to everyone,
Jen
Comment by For Us Girls Only on April 16, 2010 at 8:03am
I think this is totally stupid!!! With today's economy, people can't afford this!!! Are they money hungry or what??? They will lose lots of members, if someone wants to pay for extra service, let them, but do not punish the ones who do not have it....I lost my only child a few years ago, and I came here to find comfort and friendship by finding ones who have experieced what I have. And I did. And now they want to ruin it for everyone!!!!!
Comment by Tree Lindsay on April 16, 2010 at 8:00am
VERY sad news. Seems that now that Ms. Bianchini has left Ning, Mr. Andreessen has turned just a tad bit VERY greedy!! I realize that they make their money off of Premium Ning accounts, but not all of us can afford to pay for their services. Sorry, but I don't feel that a company that raised $119 million in venture capital is suffering so much that they have to do dismiss their free accounts, who also help to raise money for them with the Ning and Google ads that are placed on these sites. I just recently started my Ning account because it was such a fabulous service, and now I will be forced to close it after all of these wonderful members just joined my network. Really SUCKS!!
Comment by Black Folk Hot Spots on April 16, 2010 at 7:39am
This is the dumbest move they could make- remember circuit city!!! when you take the customer out of service- has facebook or myspace- what they should do if they are money hungry as I figure they are. they should charge advertisers- samn did blogger or word press do this? nope Thanks for the great news on friday!

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