Social Network Service (SNS) newest trend – “affordable and necessary” premium pricing » Community

The Social Network Service (SNS) NING

by Donna L. Quesinberry
Government Business Examiner

On the 15th of March 2010, Jason Rosenthal moved from the Chief Operations Officer (COO) of Ning to the role of Chief Executive Officer (CEO). Rosenthal replaces Ms. Gina Bianchini the former CEO of Ning. She and co-founder Marc Andreessen are out of the proverbial loop at this time.

This online platform for creating your own social network, for anything, launched as a “free resource” in October of 2005.

Ning competes with other SNS favorites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and BigTent by appealing to people who want to create their own social networks around specific interests. Using independent visuals, design, features, and member data – each of these SNS sites have established social networks that number in the hundreds of thousands under the Ning umbrella are virtually millions of members.

Features Ning proffers that differ from other SNS sites include catering to specific membership bases and allowing developers to ignite source level control of their SNS, which enables underlying logic and feature changes. Ning sites become more extensible and very privatized in their look and feel. Familiar to the Washington DC area are GovLoop and TFCN (formerly The Federal Contractors Network).

With the size and scope of the current Ning infrastructure – it may be no wonder that Ning is experiencing financial difficulties causing them to begin a premium fee requirement in order to maintain a Ning presence. From Rosenthal as CEO in under thirty days:

An Update from Ning

Posted by Jason Rosenthal on April 16, 2010 – 3:13 pm

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.

What will this mean for members of Ning SNS? In the future, Creators will be absorbing costs that Ning can no longer afford to absorb themselves. Ning’s premium options include support (which has a $10/month and $100/month options for different service levels); Custom domains ($5 a month); Extra storage and bandwidth ($10 a month); Ad removal ($25 a month) and the ability to hide any trace that you’re running on Ning ($25 a month).

The good news is, Rosenthal promises to make fees affordable to SNS Creators, the bad news is “all” pay-as-you go platforms usually start-out this way. $10.00 a month doesn’t sound like much; however, $120.00 a year does and we know that fee structure won’t last over time. Eventually, there will be a fee increase and that $120.00 a year will in short form double to $240.00 a year.

The big question is – will other SNS sites begin to follow suit? How soon will LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace and BigTent jump on the Creator Fee bandwagon? And, once creators are paying, the transition to membership costs for joining and participating may wind up part and participle of the SNS experience. Perhaps it is wise to get in while the getting is good – on the far side that grandparent clauses will apply with reduced rates.

About the Author: President | Owner of DonnaInk Publications (dp), Donna L. Quesinberry manages a small woman-owned one-stop shop for dp Book Nook (dpbn) and dp Federal Contract (dpfc) clients. Ms. Quesinberry is an author (fiction and technical non-fiction); coach; university course developer and instructor; and poetess. She has previously aired on CNBC on topics relative to women. She provides training and train-the-trainer capacities as well as continuous process improvement (CPI) of business development and capture for prospective and ongoing clientele. A mother of five, Donna also has seven grandchildren who know her as Baba Miere’ Miere’. Call today for an expert remedy to your product as a solution development!

Author | Business Developer | Capture Manager | Coach | Writer Representative

Ms. Donna L. Quesinberry
President DonnaInk Publications (dp)
5120 Chowan Avenue
Alexandria, Virginia 22312
[email protected]

Work: 01-703-270-9440 Fax: 01-703-462-8953
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To develop your next product as a solution (PAAS), call dp.
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