DISQUS

Jim Squires · 2 years ago

Great insights--I'm thrilled you're enjoying Ning. Some corrections/clarifications on the downsides you mentioned however:

"If you make a Ning-hosted site, it seems you don’t own it or any of the content."

JS: We enable anyone to take a feed of the content on their network and back it up or migrate it off Ning. It requires some technical know-how, but is possible in a way that it simply isn't on other "one-size-fits-all" social networks

"with the free model, you don’t benefit from any of the ads that are displayed. There seems to be a “premium” option with a monthly fee that allows “revenue access“."

JS: Yes, that's correct. For a monthly fee we empower the network owner to run their own ads and receive 100% of the associated revenue.

"Maybe in the future, Ning will follow the open source model and allow users to install the software on their own servers."

JS: We already do! It again takes some technical know-how, but at any point in time, you can request a copy of the code running your new social network and run everything on your own servers. We're constantly balancing openness, sustainability, security (especially around people's personal information), while giving people as much flexibility as possible and the opportunity to create their own social networks for anything.

Drop me a note at jim at our company name dot com any time if you have any questions.

webomatica · 2 years ago

Hi Jim, hey, that's pretty cool. Thanks for helping clear up some stuff that I could only figure out as a user.

That last point in particular is pretty awesome. Obviously, I'm quite a fan of WordPress and Joomla.

MOin · 1 year ago

very nice and different kind of media network i really like there idea of letting people make their own social circle and keep up their community managed great find very new for me.