No more Ning

As I've mentioned before, I administer a couple of Ning social networks. The value proposition was that you could, for free, set-up your own social network. It's great for clubs, churches, networking associations, etc. to provide a Facebook-like experience for those who share a common affinity around the organization or interest.

This was the promise on which oodles of groups started their Ning networks and got people to sign up, upload pictures, blog posts, calendar items and all sorts of other content.

But now Ning is going to press the Delete key on your Ning if you don't pony up!

From their website:

"We recently made the decision to focus 100 percent of the company on enhancing the features and services we offer to paying Network Creators. As part of this change, we'll be phasing out our free service. We will announce further details about Ning's product roadmap and different pricing options on May 4, 2010."

I'm not naive enough to think that businesses don't need to re-think their business model from time-to-time, especially if you're not making money. But when you're entire business model has been based on a free social network, and you get people to spend hours of their time building and maintaining their Ning site, you shouldn't just hit Delete on them. It's a broken promise. I'm not here to tell Ning how to do their business (ok, I've done it before with the spam thing, so I might as well do it again) but it doesn't seem like a good thing to build your business on a promise and then back out on it. It's bait and switch, and the bait now smells pretty fishy.  Sorry, terrible pun!