Changes to the Ning Terms of Service (TOS)

[John McDonald]

Today, we're making two changes to our Ning Terms of Service (TOS) related to the acquisition of Ning by Glam Media, a company that helps connect online publishers (like yourself) with top brand advertisers. As we stated in our initial announcement of the acquisition, we plan no immediate changes to the Ning team, product, or business as a result of the acquisition. We’ll continue to deliver new, innovative features to help you build and manage a vibrant community.

The two changes to our TOS are related to new revenue opportunities offered by Glam Media that Network Creators may elect to take advantage of in the future:

• For Network Creators who choose to apply to join the Glam Publisher Network and are accepted, we’ve added a new clause to our TOS. Network Creators who join the Glam Publisher Network grant us a content license that enables us to promote and showcase their Ning Network and their network’s content on Glam.com, Bliss.com, Brash.com or other Glam-affiliated websites.

• In order to help us deliver the highest value revenue programs, we've made a change to the TOS to help us account for all of the traffic and usage on the Ning Platform as measured by comScore, a third-party service that measures the worldwide audience and usage of websites. If you use your own domain for your Ning Network — unless you request at any time to opt-out — you agree to assign the traffic relating to your domain-mapped Ning Network to Glam Media for comScore syndicated audience measurement reports.

In case you have questions about the second change, here are a few FAQs to help out:

Who uses comScore?

Advertising agencies and large brand advertisers subscribe to comScore’s reports to compare the traffic and audience composition of publishers – including individual publishers, networks of publishers (e.g. Glam Media), and companies who own multiple websites (e.g. AOL).

Why is Ning making this change?

This change will help advertisers who use comScore to get a more accurate measure of the traffic and audience across all networks on the Ning Platform.

What happens when my traffic is assigned to Glam Media in comScore?

Your traffic will roll-up under the Ning / Glam Media property in comScore reports so that comScore subscribers can see total traffic and audience composition across the Ning Platform and the Glam Publisher Network.

Will advertising agencies and brand advertisers still be able to see my individual network’s traffic and audience composition?

Yes!  If you use your own custom domain for your Ning Network, your network’s traffic will still be available and viewable in the comScore reports.

What if I don’t use my own custom domain for my Ning Network?

comScore only reports top level domains (e.g. Ning.com). If you don’t use a custom domain for your Ning Network, your traffic is already included in the report for the Ning.com domain.

Why might a Ning Creator opt-out of assigning traffic to Glam Media?

• Network Creators who directly sell ad inventory across multiple websites to advertisers may want to “roll-up” the traffic from all of their websites into a single property in comScore reports. Note, you need to subscribe to comScore in order to create the property roll-up.
• Network Creators who have already assigned their traffic to a publisher network other than Glam Media will likely want to opt-out.

Can I opt-out in the future?

• Yes. You can opt-out at any time and we will notify comScore to remove your domain-mapped network from the Ning / Glam Media property roll-up.  Note, this removal process may take up to 60 days to take effect.
• Alternatively, you can submit a new Traffic Assignment Letter (TAL) to comScore.  Please kindly let us know if you do this so we can remove your domain-mapped network from our property roll-up.

 

[Craig Zelizer]

Thanks. Will this have any impact on those of us who use google ads? I have already requested an opt out (and am not very satisfied this can take 60 days). Also, the terms of using the Glam Media, are quite surprising (I am not using glam ads so it doesn't affect me), as this is so broad and what about copyright issues? Finally, when you indicate no immediate changes to Ning, what is the long-term vision of Ning within Glam Media? This would be great to include in your 2012 product development? Are there any positive developments that you anticipate or anything that network creators should be aware of that may affect our networks?

[John McDonald]

Craig,

I'll try to answer all of your questions:

1) These TOS changes will have no impact on Network Creators using Google ads.

2) We haven't submitted any domain-mapped network URLs to comScore yet, so if you opt-out now, your traffic will not be assigned to the Ning / Glam Media property.  The "may take up to 60 days to take effect" applies to opt-out requests by NCs in the future.

3) The content license for Ning Networks who join the Glam Publisher Network is needed to give us permission to promote these networks on the various Glam properties.

4) We plan to update the Ning roadmap in the next several weeks and will post about the product development plans on Creators.  I'm confident the development plans will be very positive!

Thanks,
John

[Craig Zelizer]

Thanks. As always appreciate the very rapid and helpful support from Ning.

[Oswaldo Salzano Neto]

What's the counterpart in giving the audience for Glam Media?
I've already request my opt-out.

Please, don't get me wrong, but for a while I have the feeling that my 140K users social network I developed for 4 years doesn't actually belong to me. 

[John McDonald]

Oswaldo,

Can you please clarify what you mean by "counterpart"?

I'd like to clarify a few things about the TOS changes:

- The second Ning TOS change only applies to reporting through comScore, a 3rd party service that provides traffic and audience measurement reports to ad agencies and advertisers.  It doesn't apply to any other measurement service (e.g. Google Analytics).

- The second Ning TOS change only applies to how individual network traffic is "rolled-up" within the comScore reports.  A roll-up is similar to a sub-total.  Subscribers to comScore will see each network's traffic as an individual line item.  Then they will see a sub-total of traffic at the top of the page for all networks and other publishers under the Ning / Glam Media property roll-up.

- Most importantly, the Ning TOS changes in no way change a Network Creator's ownership of their network's data and content.

I hope that helps,

John

[Oswaldo Salzano Neto]

Tks for the response, John.

We all know that audience = money in internet business. Through the agreement with Ning, Glam Media has appropriated all the "long tail" of the networks' audience. For 95% of the networks with low audience, it wouldn't affect anything. But for a website with more than 100K unique visitors, the game begins to get a bit serious.

I understand Ning's plans and position, but as a costumer I'm not that satisfied with it.

I may not have understood correctly, but it seemed to me something like "I'll take your audience unless you say no. In return, maybe one day I can offer you some revenue opportunities with your social network".

[Debby Bruck]

How did you opt-out? I don't want any advertising on my network, either.

[SweetPotato]

Broadly speaking this doesn't bother me and I have faith in Glam's vision for the future of Ning and our networks. Successful networks might also find themselves being offered large sums of money from Glam to buy control of Them, you never know.
I sell ads directly and simply put them in a text box with some Google Analytics click code attached. Do i need to do anything? I don't particularly want my site traffic being disclosed to public scrutiny on comscore. I guess it's this sentence that confuses:

Network Creators who directly sell ad inventory across multiple websites to advertisers may want to “roll-up” the traffic from all of their websites into a single property in comScore reports. Note, you need to subscribe to comScore in order to create the property roll-up.

What does that mean?

And is opting out as simple as sending them an email with my domain?

Cheers
SP

[John McDonald]

SP,

If you are selling ads for multiple websites and networks directly to brands or ad agencies that subscribe to comScore, then you may want to opt-out and create your own property roll-up for your websites in comScore reporting.  A property roll-up simply provides a convenient sub-total of the traffic across your multiple websites for advertisers who use the comScore service -- so you can better represent yourself in negotiations with advertisers. 

If you are only selling advertising for one network, or the businesses you sell advertising to don't use comScore, this change shouldn't effect you. 

Opting out is as simple as sending an email to [e-mail] with your custom domain name.

Thanks!

John

[SweetPotato]

Thanks John, so, just to clarify (I'm a sweet potato not a smart potato), if I opt out then comscore users will see traffic for my domain, if I don't then comscore users won't (because I'll be in Glam's figures).
SP

[John McDonald]

SP,

No.  In either case, comScore users will see traffic for your domain. 

if you opt-out, your traffic won't be included in a sub-total (property roll-up) for Ning / Glam Media.  If you don't opt-out, your traffic will be displayed both as a separate line item for your domain and in the sub-total for Ning / Glam Media.

Thanks for pushing me to clarify!
John

[SweetPotato]

well that's an entirely different thing. previously, comscore users could not see my traffic, and now, either way, they can. that makes me unhappy.
Can you please demonstrate with an example how a sub-total (property roll-up) and seperate line might appear to comscore users so i can make a decision. Thanks