| Ning's new chief executive has announced that the site is going to shed staff, stop its free service and concentrate on its premium users. But it isn't the first to fail at the freemium approach, and it won't be the last Ning, which is the provider of this social network site and which lets anyone set up their own social network service, is slashing staff numbers from 167 to 98 and changing its strategy. Recently-appointed chief executive Jason Rosenthal sent staff a memo that said: "we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity" -- that being the premium service, not the one supported by advertising. "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," added Rosenthal. Over its life, the service has received about $120m in venture capital backing, but does not appear to have made a profit. Ning ("peace" in Chinese) has been well regarded partly because of its chairman, Marc Andreessen, who led the development of the Mosaic browser and co-founded Netscape to replace it (hence Mozilla, a Mosaic-killer). His co-founder and former CEO at Ning, Gina Bianchini, also made a name for herself. In a video interview published at Vator.tv last month, Bianchini said the next-generation Ning would be launched this year, and that the company was hiring. She was also happy to talk about revenue streams. She said about 13% of the user base paid for some premium services, and Ning also made money from "virtual gifts". As an example, she mentioned "bloody chain saws" being sold on the Lost Zombies network. But the day before that enthusiastic interview was published online, Andreessen announced that Bianchini had "decided to step down after five and a half years of hard and terrific work". Ning had banked on its user base expanding virally, and in his announcement about Bianchini, Andreessen claimed that ""Ning today is one of the world's top social networking properties, with more than 2.3 million user-created Ning Networks and more than 45 million registered users, and is far and away the market leading social platform for interests and passions." However, in Eyeballs still don't pay the bills, a blog post at 37Signals (the company behind Basecamp, Backpack, Campfire, Writeboard etc), David Hansson said: "Ning's problem is not a lack of eyeballs but its inability to turn them into cash money to pay the bills. Getting more of something that's a net-negative is not going to make up for it."
On Andreessen's numbers, millions of users could now be faced with paying for Ning's service or abandoning the networks that have taken them so much time and effort to build. This is a useful reminder that no free online service is guaranteed to remain free, or even to survive. Indeed, it's a fair bet that at least 90% will, in the long term, Article written by Jack Schofield - Source: www.guardian.co.uk/ |
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Dear Jens, you know I can't speak english and each message I read and every answer I write, I have to use online translator. Please excuse my slow response as well as errors of language. Thanks.
For personal reasons I moved away from this network and many other for months and did not come here. But you know I have always considered your network as a generator site of mental and psychic welfare.
All ning network creators are waiting for May 4, but meanwhile people are looking for alternatives in this discuss and I find very interesting the shared data sheet that is circulating there.
All people and in all languages, there is talk of many possible solutions. For example, in the group of spanish creators are talking about Drupal project in open source.
But it seems that this software, as well as Joomla, are not easy to handle. At least not as easy as creating a Ning network and certainly not for people who have a purpose other than for software.
At least I do not want to get into so many complications. I like to create themes (layouts) here at Ning, but it is not my main goal. My nets are for philosophy and politics (I am part of a silent majority who do not want the monarchy in Spain). So I guess people here on OMN, come to share music, not to be network programmers.
If people want a place that is already half designed to avoid having to do everything ourselves, and where we can create clusters, and other options are not elsewhere, I think it is normal to start to ask for a small fee to members here and all other networks that wish permancer the Ning platform. Every day I read the network creators and I can see that many have already put a Paypal button on their Nings.
But I understand that members are not responding here or on other networks (not in mine) we are all waiting to know the prices of Ning. If these prices allow me to pay 1 of my networks and collaborate in this, of course counting on me. There are many good hours I've spent here and it makes sense to work to maintain a site that makes me feel good.
Hugs.
Ayla.
thanks a lot for your response and thanks a lot for your feedback that you enjoy it to be a member of this network. Let me write you that I check daily what's happen on Ning, what 's new on the Blog Creators Forum. I am reading but I do not reply to any of these discussions on Creators. After May 4th Ning will gives us 10 weeks to accept the new conditions and the new prices. We can migrate our network if it needful to do that - or we can stay. But at this moment everything is quite unclear and there are some superactive writers on Creator who like to use their chance to promote their community software solutions. Some discussion are really not serious and not fair. I have thought about Drupal 2 years ago. MySpace is based on Drupal and and could be a fine solution. Joomla Community Builder - why not - or buddypress - yeah!!! There are so many systems and software solutions. I tested as well spruz and grou.ps and signed it up - but they are not stable enough and their design and handling is horrible. Dolphin seems to be a good choice maybe ...
But anyway - let us wait until May 4th when Mr. Jason Rosenthal will declares the upcoming company structure of Ning. It is time to re-think our common ressources. Hugs!
Yours Jens
To explain this thread with some less words: OMN started in July 2007 as overtones.ning.com - OMN is hosted on this provider which is mentioned above. On April 15th 2010 the actually new CEO of this provider called Ning decided a new strategy for this company. That's the main sentence: "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," - okay: OMN is a Premium network since 2008. I have to wait until the next announcement which will be published by the company on May 4th 2010 - at the moment I know nothing exactly how this new company strategy will affects the maintenance of Overtone Music Network. I see three options: Pay what they need. If I can't pay what they want to leave the provider and try to install this network on own server. If I can't do this alone the last options will be maybe to stop the experience OMN. But that's really my last option
I mean: if I have to do this all alone without any other support, the last option will be that I have to switch this network into the offline modus. That's the ultimate option.
Thank you for providing this important information in advance!
It may be understandable that Ning needs to demand a payment but it is just a little strange that they don't inform about the transition.
I hope you and we may find the best solution!
Best,
Skye