No Free Lunch Part III – Ning axes Free Networks

Posted on April 15, 2010 by Kirsten Winkler

Big news. After Gina Bianchini left Ning about a month ago there were already some speculations why. Mike Arrington assumed that it is some kind of a Davos curse because three CxOs he interviewed at the last summit left they jobs afterwards. Others already pointed out that the company might have some issues etc.

Today Jason Rosenthal, the new CEO announced that Ning is discontinuing its free offer. Admins who run a free network can either upgrade to a paid version or, well, b*gger off.

Ning was one of the lighthouses of the Freemium model and seeing it abandon the idea in favor of a strictly profit driven business is really a bomb. Although we can only speculate about all the different reasons why that change is coming, the fact that besides this move Ning will cut off 40 employees sounds like stories we heard from MySpace and others recently. You can read the email of Jason Rosenthal in the TechCrunch blog post linked at the end of this post.

Now on to the educational world. Ning has become a very popular tool for educators to build up networks. Classroom 2.0 is of course the biggest one (and also the one which always paid for the Ning service), then we have the EduPLN, Lancelot School, Virtual Round Table Conference, Myngle and so on.

There is of course a lot of tweeting going on right now (will Twitter be the next to charge?). I can understand that there is a certain “We don’t give a sh*t” attitude in the Ning announcement and of course, it could have been handled better but on the other side why does everyone panic and looking for a Plan B?

I got one for you: If you want to keep your network, pay for it. Easy. And if you don’t want / cannot pay for it, let your users pay. If they really like what you are doing someone or maybe a couple eventually will pay for the others to use the network for free. Wait a second, isn’t that…

That’s one thing what this story is all about. Do you care enough for the service to pay for it? An interesting question for Ning. And on the other hand, do your members care enough about your network to pay for it? Interesting question for you. And then of course: do you care enough about your network to pay for them, so they can use the network you set up?

Honestly, I think freemium will be dead and gone by the end of the year in most markets. And that is actually a good thing because it brings back realism and maybe people will start to appreciate services again and not just open a free account everywhere they come across. By the way, do you know supermarkets where the people who buy in the gourmet section pay for all the others who then get frozen food for free?

And who knows, maybe eduBlogs is already taking some notes.

TechCrunch Blog Post about Ning | Gina Bianchini leaves Ning

Related Posts:

  1. No Free Lunch Part X – English Attack! will launch with Subscription Model
  2. Pearson will Pay for your Ning – Or Posterous will Move it For Free
  3. No Free Lunch Part 2: No more Free Listings on TeachStreet
  4. Supercool School will launch at DEMO – wants to become the Ning of Education
  5. There is no free lunch – Babbel goes Premium

About Kirsten Winkler

Education 2.0 Blogger at KirstenWinkler.com, Interviewer at EDUKWEST.com, Consultant at WinklerMedia.com.
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  • "Free" was never really free in the first place. It was always intended to be a "brilliant, [mutually beneficial] business model" disguised with the FREE label. It is still a "brilliant" business model, however, it requires a TITANIUM SCREW in its infrastructure instead of the STANDARD STEEL SCREW.

    I wrote an article titled "Open Letter to NING CEO, Jason Rosenthal:: The Ghosts of NING Past, Present, and Future" on the Virtual Organization Management Institute blog at http://www.virtualorganization.net which goes into more detail about the TITANIUM SCREW I am referring to.

    As well, next week, I am posting a very detailed article on the "FREE" fallacy that the general public has been bombarded with.

    Emil Sarnogoev of WackWall.com is a genius--although he doesn't know it yet--and his approach to the NING debacle is spot on...the FREEDOM concept is very ingenious and should be the model by which all other "so-called FREE" social network providers abide by. Before you make any investment into one of these FREE social network providers, that provider has a DUTY and RESPONSIBILITY to allow you to take all your stuff with you wherever you want to go without being faced with only one option: Succumb to whatever it is that they decide to impose on you or just watch all your investment in time and effort [[on their behalf]] as well as on your own network go down the drain in a split second.

    I was so impressed by his logic that I went to OpenWack, the open source developer of the software that powers WackWall, and made a $10 Paypal donation and I am going to recommend his company in my article to all 300,000 members of my networks and that they make a donation as well, whether it's a $1 or whatever it is that they can afford.

    By the way, I just came across WackWall by accident while I was on SPRUZ.com, an alternative to NING, and noticed a blog reference to wackwall. I almost started to ignore it, thinking I wouldn't want to have the word "wack" in my address....seems a bit wacky...however, the minute I got to the site, I fell in love with it, etc.... In other words, prior to today, I do not and have never had any sort of direct or indirect relationship or association with Emil or any of his companies.

    I only believe in rewarding good behavior and WackWall's business model and philosophy meets that treshold.

    Prof. Pierre Coupet
    Virtual Organization Management Institute


    I just wish that NING had come out and say that they were under severe financial stress and would probably have to lay off about 50 people who would no longer have a job and that the "so-called FREE" members could make a contribution via a small Paypal donation at anytime in order to keep them on board working hard and continuing to provide outstanding support to ALL the members.

    Knowing the American people as well as I do, I can bet my last dollar that the outpouring of support to NING would be overwhelming. I would have contributed and so would millions of others, including premium customers who could afford to do so. The bottom line is: there is more than one way to skin a cat and there are plenty of ways to generate "additional" revenues from the so-called FREE customers.



    People, for the most part, are generally good and very sensible instead of a bunch of "cheap, whining, and irresponsible freeloaders" that they are being portrayed as and which is so much farther away from the truth. Next week's article will make my case.
  • Oliver
    For educational social networks you could give mixxt.com a try. It is a free alternative to Ning and offers full collaboration features like wikis, add-files, image albums, and a sophisticated file system.

    Other prominent advantages are mixxt's strong Community Management features, powerful sub-groups, full collaboration features, and advanced customization.

    mixxt's philosophy is different from Ning's: it's based on White Labeled solutions for large institutions and enterprises, as well as Freemium services.

    If you want to import your Ning network to mixxt, find a useful tool in mixxt's Ning importer (http://bit.ly/ningalt).

    You can try out your own free mixxt network by checking out this site (http://mixxt.com)!
  • hollysuel
    I guess this doesn't really surprise me and it will be interesting to see what ning sites from the language teaching world will still be there when this happens. I, personally, have left most of the ning sites that I wasn't actively part of because there were just way too many on offer. I'm pretty sure that most of the sites that I still belong to will remain, but it will be interesting to watch.
  • Reading the Twitter stream of the edu world according Ning they are all on the search for the next free alternative. The caravane moves on :)
  • PS I presented a rather sophmoric model of how I thought we could build a holistic learning community, please FF to minute 18:30 to see the actual model I proposed.

    http://www.wiziq.com/online-class/264727-the-wiziq-wealth-machine-inroduction


    At the very end I present the last "missing link" of the puzzle, which is that some money even pennies are the lifeblood of the organism we are trying to build.
  • Absolutely. If Facebook would take only $1 USD per month and only 10% of the members today would agree, the platform would still generate $5 million USD per month :)
  • Thanks for your candid thoughts. I too feel that free expectations have so pervaded many societies and "entitlement" from governement or some other has gotten way out of hand. Bottom line... by-and-large it is unsustainable and free devalues all parties concerned. There are excellent models for mixtures of free (flatworlder) but it has created a large popluation of takers and not enough givers within our online communities.

    Any false reality (e.g. a community with no responsibilities to participate with real value) must, sooner or later fail. Either financially or morally.
  • The problem is everyone around is pursuing this strategy. All other social network providers are basically the same because you have to trust your data to them.

    Read our take on this problem: http://wackwall.com/freedom.php

    We also provide hosted social network platform at WackWall. Our software is open source and your site can't be shut down if you use open source. We put this software as a hosted solution so it's still easy to create and run a site for everyone.

    Damn, people are already asking to migrate their Ning data to us.

    Try out http://WackWall.com
  • So your business model is basically offering hosting for those who don't want to set up a server on their own, right?
  • Our business model is fremium similar to what Ning offered initially - extra storage + some premium features. Open source version is just a nice plan B, and is also a separate, different business model.
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