Betting the Farm

Submitted by mpm on
Countless nonprofits flocked to Ning to create social networks. Since I'm not a social media guru, I've generally kept my opinions about this to myself. But now that Ning isn't free anymore, I'm going to carp some. I think over the course of lo this last few years, I have blogged or tweeted about this very phenomenon what feels like countless times. Nonprofits find services for free. They start depending on them. The free services disappear, for business reasons. The nonprofit community gets up in arms. Lather, rinse, repeat. There is nothing wrong with software or services that don't cost anything. Nothing at all. But if you are going to bet the farm, make sure you know what the risks are. Using free services is fine, but know why they are free. Are they free because the company behind them is an ad revenue machine and uber profitable (Google)? Is it free because it's open source (Drupal, Elgg, Word Press)?  Is it free because it is a profitable company that has a clear and well defined donation program (Salesforce.com)? Or is it free because it is a start up in search for a business model (Ning)? There is an effort afloat (and a petition) to get Ning to make nonprofit and educational accounts free. I'm not holding my breath. They eliminated 40% of their staff. They are feeling pinched, and need to stop their burn rate. I don't know how charitable this will make them feel. And even if they do, there is no guarantee that Ning will even survive. Anyway, if you're looking for a great social network management system that won't get pulled out from under you, try Elgg. It's open source, and out of the box, it does just about everything Ning does, without the need for the deep setup required to set up Drupal like Ning. It has an active developer community, and is growing. Or, if you look for another free service, make sure you understand the risks, and be prepared for possible disaster if it's a startup in search of a business model.

Comments

Nice post, Michelle. Short

Submitted by Chanelle Carver (not verified) on

Nice post, Michelle. Short and to the point. I agree, not holding my breath to see if Ning makes nonprofit and education accounts free. It would be nice if they could extend the deadline (whenever that may be) for these groups to allow more time to find a new platform or gather the resources needed to pay for the premium service - providing free is not an option.

My main issue is that network creators have to wait two weeks for more details. Two weeks...really? Yet, the announcement is all over the internet already. What sort of details are we talking about? People are freaking out, more than likely because they aren't exactly sure what the "change" entails. As a network creator, I would have appreciated an email or something before I read about it on TechCrunch.

I have built a few Ning sites

Submitted by Melanie (not verified) on

I have built a few Ning sites over the past year to cater to all my different interests and to hopefully build a community around them. None of them have fully gotten off the ground, but I have enough members on some to make moving from Ning an annoying prospect.

So, reading over the information about Ning's history, I'm wondering if they'd be better off if they went back to allowing pornographic sites, which at one time accounted for about one-fifth of Ning's profits. Those could certainly be made premium and perhaps could help float free services for non-profits and educational institutions.

Just an idea, Ning, if you're listening...

Last week, I attended

Submitted by Aerin (not verified) on

Last week, I attended TedXOntarioEd. One of the teacher presenters talked about her use of Ning in English class - she forms communities around the texts and students build character profiles and communicate from those perspectives. It's brilliant. I'm not a teacher, but I know how engaging the typically authorized resources are. There's so little digital available, and most school boards (in Canada) are so behind that they wouldn't approve or purchase them for their teachers anyways. Ning gives teachers a free means to encourage 21st century skills, such as digital literacy, through engaging technology. It would be a real shame if Ning pulled this out from under our teachers. Education is a social purpose venture.

Too bad I wasn't reading your

Submitted by Anna (not verified) on

Too bad I wasn't reading your blog lo these last few years. I have a year-old nonprofit that is entirely web-based and, too bad for me, I started it on Ning. There were a few reasons I did that. One, I had another private network on Ning and was comfortable with the UI. Two, it was free. Since our group is, as far as I know, unique, I had no idea if it would work and didn't want to invest a lot of money before knowing if it would work. Now that I know it will work, I am still committed to using software out of someone's box in order to keep costs to a minimum. Seems to me that the minute you start messing with the code, things get awfully expensive awfully fast. We want to focus on bringing money in and giving it away, not updating code.

Though initially somewhat freaked out by the announcement, I now realize that Ning doesn't have a couple things that are crucial for me anyway. 1)People need to be able to come to my site, join and contribute $5 to our Grant Account in one easy process and 2)I have got to be in control of my own data. Online communities are far more than their members. They are complicated amalgam of hard information and vague but nonetheless powerful ideas people have about the meaning of the community. Off to give Elgg a look - thanks for the recommendation.

As the author of the petition

Submitted by Jason (not verified) on

As the author of the petition that your reference in this post, I want to thank you for your thoughtful insight into the Ning drama that is currently unfolding. While I would love to rant about how wrong you are and how nonprofits were perfectly justified in flocking to a wonderful resource like Ning, I think that you make a number of extremely valid and important points. It's easy to be drawn in by the lure of "free" and to overlook the bigger picture (e.g., why, how, and how long is it free). We need to be increasingly careful of organizations who are searching for a business model and using "free" as a way to build traffic and notoriety. There are plenty of them out there, especially in the social media realm, and we should take heed not to put all of our eggs in one basket.

With that being said, I think that the nonprofit and educational communities have a right to be upset. Technology is rapidly changing and few would argue that it's incredibly unpredictable. Today's "sure thing" is tomorrow's bust, and what seems like a certain failure can become the next "sure thing". It's unfair to use the "fool me once" idiom in cases like these, when none of us really know for sure whether Google, Drupal, Elgg or any of the other "sure things" will be around in 5 years.

It's easy to dismiss these organizations for making the same mistake (again!), explain the error of their ways, and move on. However, I think it's more important that we stand up as a community, form a united voice, and let organizations like Ning know that we've been a critical part of their success and can just as easily have an instrumental role in their failure.

Even if you think the petition is doomed to fail, I hope you'll take a moment and join those of us asking Ning to recognize our contributions and make an exception to their disappointing but understandable change in strategy.

@Jason - You are certainly

Submitted by admin (not verified) on

@Jason - You are certainly correct that this weeks "sure thing" is next week's "bust." But the point of this post is that it's important to understand the tools you are using. The Drupal or Elgg community might fold tomorrow (they certainly won't) but the code is freely available and open source - so they won't be pulled out from under you. It seems it's as likely that Google will go away as it is that, say, Verizon or T-Mobile will go away - reasonably low risk. But the many dozens of startups in search of a business model living on VC funding ... who knows - and it seems that it's important to understand the risk before investing nonprofit time and resources.

I think it's certainly fine to use whatever leverage nonprofits have with companies - I'm all for that. I'm happy to sign the petition. But at the stage this company is at, the only measure of success is going to be dollars in the door. Otherwise, the doors close. They'd be smart to make networks inexpensive for nonprofits - to basically cover their costs. But I can see how they might think of free networks as simply a drain.

I'm a big proponent of open

Submitted by Jason (not verified) on

I'm a big proponent of open source, and agree that many nonprofit organizations could minimize their risk by considering options like Drupal and Elgg when it's possible. It always feels better knowing that you have a backup of the source code, user info, and content if things go bust. Sadly, I'm afraid that smaller nonprofits often end up using free, hosted, proprietary solutions like Ning - especially for social networking tools - due to a lack of technological expertise, time, or sufficient funding for a web developer. Tools like Drupal are wonderful, but they've traditionally come with a pretty steep learning curve. Hopefully, these tools will continue to work on making development more user friendly and it will become relatively simple for an individual with even basic web development skills to build a social networking site on their own. Until then, I'm afraid we'll continue to see a cycle of "lather, rinse, repeat."

Another free alternative is

Submitted by Oliver (not verified) on

Another free alternative is mixxt.com, offering functionalities very similar to Ning but with some additions.

Here are the most prominent advantages of mixxt:
- Strong Community Management features (e.g., newsletter system, access control)
- Powerful sub-groups
- Full collaboration features including wikis, image albums, file systems, event-management and CMS
- Advanced customization

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

mixxt networks are especially popular among education, work-related and event networks.

Users wanting to import their Ning network to mixxt find a useful tool in our Ning importer (http://bit.ly/ningalt).

Give your own mixxt network a try for free here: (http://mixxt.com)

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