Ning 2011 Roadmap

[Jonathan Shambroom]

Welcome to the Ning Roadmap! First, let me introduce myself. I'm Jonathan Shambroom, Chief Product Officer at Ning, in my fourth month here and loving it.

2011 ushers in a new era of communication from Ning to you, our customers, and it includes a six month view of our roadmap. The Roadmap page is now a permanent resource where you’ll be able to see what’s coming up next, big and small. The projects are listed in their general intended release order, though these will inevitably move around a bit.  (When they do, I’ll let you know). At the end of every quarter I’ll add to the roadmap the next set of major initiatives so there is always a 6 month window of insight and you can know what to expect on your networks. Each of these projects will link to individual posts on the Ning Blog and Ning Creators where we’ll provide a greater level of detail.

The driving force behind our roadmap is to build the very best product for you. If we succeed at that, and you are delighted with our service, and your communities are thriving, the Ning business will similarly thrive. Our roadmap is a balance between improving your existing experience today with current features and introducing new, innovative dimensions to your communities. Our roadmap reflects a few other balances as well. We have resources dedicated to our backend, performance, and scale, while other teams are working on our feature set. With every feature, we consider how to make it work for our loyal, long-time users who are accustomed to Ning today as well as for the brand new users of tomorrow.

Lastly, I’ll share with you my top level thinking on our product, chiefly that it empowers you to do four major things: 1) Customize your sites, 2) Build vibrant and engaged communities,  3) Manage and moderate, and 4) (Finally!) Earn revenue from your site if you so choose.  Our plan is highly informed by your feedback, so please keep it coming – via the Creators site, our Help Center, and your participation in product surveys.

I look forward to the year ahead with you!

[Chris]

Thank you Jonathan, good to meet you. I like the sound of this!

[FedMedic]

WOOT!!

[Patrick Chappelle]

Pleased to make your acquaintance Jonathan. Thank you for this discussion.

[the_real_macfly]

This is it.  Thanks to all members of the Ning team!  While some have some gripes etc.  (rightfully or not),  I believe you are doing a stellar job.

 

[EAM]

What he said!

[Julie Caterini]

lol i love that pic too COOL !

[Janettee McCrary]

Everything sounds great! I can't wait! BTW will there be a way to keep members from taking over our old networks that we closed down? Mine is SUPPOSED to be deleted but it isn't yet. I combined them with my current network, so I'd be understandably upset if someone brought it back.

[Jonathan Shambroom]

Hi Janettee.  It will never be possible for anyone to bring back a network that you started without your explicit approval.  So if you don't want it to happen, it won't.

[Janettee McCrary]

Thank you, that makes me feel a LOT better:)

[mas]

i want to advertise but i don`t know how for creating rotating ads and banners is ever-present.  I hope somebody can find me javascript code,

like this example (www.ning.com)

[solo]

sounds great but isnt anybody getting tired of not knowing if there friendship request has been accepted?

[Phillip Seaver]

I've got a few users that have told me that they mainly use it from their smartphone, so it would be nice to improve the mobile version.

 

Thanks for giving us more info.  I really like have some idea of what's going on.  :-)