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!

[Pam]

Could we get an update to the expected release of the paid membership feature? Our pre-paid year is up this summer, and my board of directors is hounding me for a plan to pay the next year (as our non-profit bank account is sitting pretty near empty). I really need to decide whether to launch a donation campaign or begin charging memberships - a decision that I cannot make until I see the details of the membership offering. I know it's in progress for Q2, and is in beta. Could we get an idea of if it's likely to be May or June, and some general overview of the specifics of the feature and how it will work? Even just some bullet points of what will be included in the program would be enormously helpful. For example, will we have the ability to have discount codes?  How much customization will we be able to do to the page where fees are collected? Will we have the ability to make it an optional donation rather than a set "fee"?  Will we have the option to allow them to change the suggested amount (so they can donate more or less than the suggestion)? Will we have the option to allow them to check a box that they will mail a paper check? Will the fees be the typcial Paypal fees? Etc, etc, etc. Hopefully some of these decisions about what will be included in the initial offering have already been made, could you please share? Thank you.

[Sta.rtUp.biz]

I see there has been no response to the above regarding paid membership. Am I missing a hidden reply somewhere. If not please can we have an update!!

[Pam]

Yes, please please please!

[George Montgomery]

I've read that your planning to introduce network charging mechanisms in Q3 of 2011.

Any chance of an update with likely availability dates ?

I currently run a business network which offers free basic membership.

I want to start introducing additional value-added services that will be chargeable to members.

These could be both in-network apps and off network services.

Does the Ning Development Roadmap include the ability to :

* offer different membership grades

* have charging mechanisms (even using systems like PayPal)

* allow chargeable and non-chargeable applications to be added individually to member profiles

I want to retain my free basic membership, but I now need to grow the network base of paying members too in order to fund my network and ensure it becomes commercially viable, and this is now a high priority for me.

What's in the Ning Roadmap to help NCs achieve these goals ?

 

Thanks

 

George Montgomery

[George Montgomery]

Any update from Ning on charging features. Do the Development Team read these member comments ?

Regards

George Montgomery

[Pam]

Yes, please! Those of us who signed up for a year pre-paid have our annual fee due again this summer. I really need to understand the paid service feature so that I can decide how to raise the money for the fee to Ning. PLEASE provide an update!

[Eric Suesz]

We'll share more on the paid access feature in the coming weeks. It's almost ready.

[Richard Rodriguez]

Wow! Great news for the holiday weekend. Thanks Eric.

[Ritesh Patel]

Jonathan...I operate anumber of sites on ning. Am wondering if you plan to ever enhance the "event" module. Allowing for things like adding guests etc. There is a discussion that was started in 2010 around all this:http://creators.ning.com/forum/topics/events-rsvp-plus-guests?comme...

Perhaps someone from the product team would care to comment.

Ritesh

[Corro King]

Additionally can events be added to programatically using the API?

[Eric Suesz]

Just wanted to update people in this discussion: We've updated our Product Roadmap and posted a new discussion here. I may close this discussion since it's getting long and unwieldy. I think you'll be excited to find a few things that have been long-requested, like a better Chat feature.