Ning Update: Rolling Out Full Details May 4th

[Jason Rosenthal]

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 offer 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.

[Michel Joseph Pétulli]

what exactly is wrong with white listed sites and free users sharing the same server the free users are typically used by the sites to do beta testing than disposed of as road apples when bugs are fixed and the code is sellable that is quite unimaginative not to say abusive ! As far as ning is concerned the problems are many ; regurgitated content of people inviting each other to join each other networks being the main one , the other one is the commerce platform calls upon 3rd party apps wich brings in many security and efficiency issues .
The "free" accounts that are using above the set level on the server are already paying for the extra bandwidth , so now lets work at making the commerce side be more efficient without any 3rd party or beta apps so clients clicking links are staying on the same page to do their purchases and downloads for starter ....check reverb nation website for examples of efficiency you will than see what i mean !

[MaxFanatic]

Mr. Rosenthal.

I know in this economic climate, it is hard to support free sites. But I have worked hard for my website, and simply do not have the resources to spend money on it. By migration path, do you mean that you are simply leaving the owners to painstakingly transfer data, copy and pasting? Or does your heartless cut of networks include a way to transfer data? I certainly hope it is the latter. I am sure many would like to hear this answer, and would be grateful if someone would ratify this conundrum.

[MaxFanatic]

WackWall sounds like a good solution. They say they will have transfer tools available, in one weeks time.

[Eric Suesz]

Please share alternatives you like right here. There's a discussion just for that by other Creators. Thanks!

[Robert]

I look forward to the announcement on May 4th ... Thanks for the update

[Knaldskalle]

Do WE look stupid?
<--I do. But don't let looks deceive you.

[doone]

Seventy five percent of the TRAFFIC comes from premium networks. Most Ning networks are free and bring very little traffic - I have a few of those, they have low Alexa ranks and few members.

[MelissaNJ]

Yes, but it takes time to build a brand and really if it wasn't for lack of features then it would be a lot easier on everyone. Of course 50cent and other major brands can get anyone to join their ning network, but not being able to have a fully functioning network for an upstart really is an issue. It's the little things like not having facebook connect, member point system, invite tracking system, fully functioning calendar, etc. which are all replaced with half-assed features to meet the minimum requirements of a social network.

Should I apologize for not being a corporation bringing in the 75% of traffic. No, and it's a shame that upstarts have no support. We are going to pay for the saemc rap we already have and were unsatisfied with.

Look at it this way. Let's say you grew up with Facebook first, would you really downgrade to myspace? My myspace site has been dead for 2 years now because of facebook and twitter. Well ning is half the quality of those social networks and any person living in the technological world doesn't need to waste their time on low quality sites. It's hard to sell minimum features and I highly doubt becoming a paying customer will change the quality of services NING is offering. Facebook connect being one of those major issues. Every site has it but NING. I can't wait to see what these other sites are offering in terms of exporting NING data. Whoever comes up with the formula first will make an instant kill.

I will pay for a quality product when I find one.

[Janettee McCrary]

I have few members, but since the FB page integration, I've had a very fast rate of members. I was just getting to the point of possibly being able to pay for a premium network.

[MelissaNJ]

FB integration is not FB Connect. The accounts will never truly be connected until members can sign up with their facebook accounts. You would see a greater improvement, if like all other sites, NING offered a FB Connect.

[Janettee McCrary]

Trust me, I agree-I gained 500 members on one page (since integration) and 600 on another... If we had CONNECT-that would have been the numbers on my network too. Still, I had a great deal of members join from the fan page.

[celina[D]]

My thoughts exactly. It was made out to look as if the free networks were taking up most of Ning's resources and that because of that they were in trouble. Later on in releases on the internet I found out about the 75/25%.

I have a free network, we've only been active for 5 weeks. So far I have no need for the premium services because what they offer is not what I need right now. However, it would have been very likely that after some time I might have opted for more bandwidth. What's happened in the past 24 hours has left me with a bad taste in my mouth as we Dutch say and an uneasy feeling in my stomac. My trust in Ning has been blown away.

However, I wil not move away yet and keep hoping the fees for the new premium system are affordable. On the other hand I will start looking into trying to set up my own community site with my own hosting company. They have Joomla integrated in their package and only costs me $10 a month with more than enough bandwidth and storage. If I can work that out I'll start making a new network. If things really turn bad I will move there. Let's just hope it won't be necessary.