Ning Ending Free Service Won't End Your Social Cloud
BY Nick Judd | Monday, April 19 2010
Plenty of Ning's competitors are looking to scoop up customers after the company announced it would soon eliminate free service.In the wake of Ning's announcement that it will cease to provide free access to its widely popular social networking platform, competitors are rushing to position themselves as replacements, and some heads of nonprofits and political organizations are wondering what to do next.
As you might have heard, Ning executives slashed staff after a change in leadership, then, on Friday, announced a move to an all-subscriber service.
More details about pricing won't be officially rolled out until May 4, but in its announcement, Ning CEO Jason Rosenthal tipped his hat to the non-profits that have made heavy use of the platform — so it may be that the company's new price points will not be a heavy load.
All the same, this is an example of the risk inherent in using just about any free service online: Free services are still provided, more often than not, by people who want to make money, and they can decide to try and make their money from you at any time.
In the wake of this announcement, the nonprofit and political worlds are buzzing — Ning was and is a go-to in that circle for people who need a quick and cheap social network right away, from the Pickens Plan network to one built for Scott Brown's Senate campaign. Alternatives of the roll-your-own variety including Elgg and Drupal are hot topics, as are a whole host of free and not-so-free software-as-a-service-style products. (Those ones are already paying for Google search advertising, so we won't duplicate work by naming them here.)
But it's too soon to tell if this will require a shift at all by existing users.
"We recognize that there are many active Ning Networks for teachers, small non-profits, and individuals and its our goal to have a set of product and pricing options that will make sense for all of them," Ning COO-turned-CEO Jason Rosenthal wrote in the official announcement. "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."
Chris Hertz, a technology consultant whose firm, New Signature, has done work for the Center for American Progress, Center for New American Security and CREW, says Ning could have avoided a lot of the hang-wringing he's seeing if the company just announced price points already.
"If you have a whole bunch of people who are relying on your product and you say, 'hey, you've got to wait until May 4 to find out pricing information on these products,' it puts people in an uncomfortable position," Hertz said.
Until pricing information comes out, it would be unwise to switch from Ning, even if there are a lot of services out there looking to court restless current Ning clients, he added.
"Generally, I've been advising people to be in a holding pattern. We don't know what the price points are, we don't know what the features are.
"A lot of people have made a big deal out of it," he said, "but it's possible that they come out in a few weeks and say, 'well it's going to be $20 a month for nonprofits.'"
When price points come out, campaigns and non-profits will have to run the numbers and see if the cost — whatever it turns out to be — is worth sticking with Ning, versus taking the network onto a self-hosted platform like Drupal or Elgg or moving to another free service. And moving to another free platform comes with the risk of encountering exactly the same problem — or something similar, such as the risk of the service shutting down or suffering data loss — later on down the line.