The Ning Effect
Posted Monday, April 19th, 2010 at 5:10 pm by Marissa (46 posts)
This week, the online community of online communities was shaken by the April 16th announcement by that the online networking company, Ning, would be phasing out its free product. Ning had cornered the market for building online communities in a fast and easy way. It was also free. It was a non-profit’s dream.
But now, if your non-profit has its community data in a free Ning product, Ning has just become a nightmare. This highlights the problem with “free” software. Free is rarely free.
We come to depend on the fact that this software will be available for us tomorrow. But when your software is hosted and free, your data, your community, your images may not really be yours. Google can rescind Analytics tomorrow, and there is not much we as users could do about it. It’s unlikely, but it’s always a possibility.
I love recommending free and fun tools, but you must always remember the caveat: online software that is free today may be gone tomorrow.
April 20th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
There are lots of ways of looking at this. Essentially it comes back to managing expectations, and recognizing what a period of change we’re living in.
We become caught up in the frenzy of Friendster, only to have it be eclipsed by Facebook & Twitter- none of which were conceived of 8 years ago.
The lesson is that all these systems will continue to change for the foreseeable future. Becoming too attached or dependent on any one piece of your technology puzzle means that sometimes you’ll get hit with an unexpected project – “crap! we’ve got to replace the XXX”. Kind of like discovering that your roof has a massive leak, or your water heater has just blown.
The remedy is to have people either on staff or a phone call away who can rally and come up with a new plan when one of your techs has to be swapped.
It *will* happen again, and sooner than you want.