lynnfredricks.com

Marc Andreessen financed NING is in trouble again, shedding 40% of its employees and dropping free, ad-supported social networks. But what brought the company down wasn’t just a turn in the economy but making a series of terrible decisions that would have a similar effect on any company.I admired NING from the very beginning – you could build a social network for free for almost whatever purpose, provided you could tolerate bits of NING branding, a NING based domain and Google ads. Mirye Software and Meshbox Design both have NING powered communities, and we also support the premium site Content Creator’s Guild, a site where 3D digital artists can share their artwork and also learn about new releases from independent content vendors. It really is a fantastic platform, but for the previous management.

It all started out with a lot of promise, with the expected start up warts. It took forever for NING to get features like assignable moderators – a staple of any open source forum software you’ve been able to run yourself for years. There was a fairly active Network Creator community and even a third party add-on market.

But a progressive disease took hold – one that affected both free network customers and premium customers a like.  Network Creators starting getting less and less news about what to expect. NING implemented a digital goods system that was automatically turned on – on all sites, including pay sites. Being able to send your buddies a digital bunny works on some communities, but not on more serious communities such as those that bring together people who are fighting for their lives against cancer.

Not only were pay network creators getting their communities hijacked by NING, but also NING did its best to avoid actually interacting with their customers. NING moved their support and customer feedback to another company, then when threaded comments became heated and customers shared specific concerns, those threaded comments would then get deleted. This seems a little odd considering NING is a social network system company – that doesn’t even use its own software to work with its own customers, and solves problems by deleting them.

Some of the changes they have announced may well improve NING’s bottom line in the short term, but the delivery of the message doesn’t entirely build confidence. New CEO Jason Rosenthal made the effort to address concerns directly with NING customers through their updated Network Creator site and states that a transition plan will be shared with NING customers within the next two weeks. That’s much better than the copy-pasted message from Mark Andreessen or the piles of congratulatory text addressed to departed CEO Gina Bianchini, who clearly left the company in its current predicament.

CEO Jason Rosenthal is off to a good start by simply listening to his paying customers.  Now if he can keep NING from undermining the very premise of his business ecosystem, NING may have a chance at a comeback.