Ning Endangered?

This is hilarious,

On this page:
http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Alive..._OR_ARE_THEY

they list Ning as on the "Endangered" list:
but the links they link to that say "....say they are going to offer migration tools." have both shut down!!

Ning users can't be feeling very secure right now.

updated by @michael: 12/11/16 09:22:49PM

We need to go after them. Start forming a plan now.

I think this WAS the plan They "got after me" going on 2 years ago

So back whenever that article was written 2 venture funded sites which had millions of dollars in funding:
* grouply $4.84M https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/grouply#/entity
* Posterous $10.14M https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/posterous#/entity

Must have had a bunch of Ning users switch to them, then they both disappear.

What a waste of money on the investors side, and some pissed off users on the client side.

Posterous was acquired by Twitter who proceeded to shut it down.

I found it interesting that for the first time in Y Combinator's history there wasn't a single social network site funded. Facebook is so huge that most startups are moving away from social network startups.

Nice to see JR filling the gap helping Ning users migrate.

Investors really want to see independent social networks die IMO. Having everyone on Facebook is very profitable for investors. Considering that the creator and CEO of Ning is Marc Andreessen he is also on the Facebook Board of Directors and an initial investor, expect Ning to die sooner than later.

Nice insight Jimmy.

There seams like space for alternative networks to exist though. Facebook has a 'connection via people you know' setup, but for a lot of the time, I don't care that my friends aren't into what I'm into, but just want updates on what it is I'm interested in even if it doesn't come from someone I know.

"I don't care that my friends aren't into what I'm into, but just want updates on what it is I'm interested in even if it doesn't come from someone I know."

This is an important reason why social network communities are still needed as opposed to just FB. FB has too much noise to signal ratio.




--
...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 09/12/16 08:48:17AM

@michael there will always be alternative social networks, I totally agree with that!

My last post was more focused on venture capitalists and startups. Not many of those aforementioned are interested in funding / starting social networks.

startups - because there is no funding.
venture capitalists - aren't funding because they see FB as a beast that can't currently be beat... which is pretty much true and there isn't enough profit in niche sites.

There will always be people trying to take down the king and they will have investors. Venture capitalist like to spread their bets around. In football terms, they bet on both teams.

I follow that stuff pretty closely. Right now, there isn't any interest by the major venture capitalists firms in funding social network startups. Of course, most of those investors are invested in FB.

Most of the smaller investors listen to the larger investors and at this time, social networks - as far a new startups - aren't going to get any major funding. It's almost like a big joke right now.

A good idea is a good idea though. Money is always there for a good idea. Not sure the next Facebook sized social network idea has been thought of yet.

That rings true to me. Where I see a systematic problem is the expectations it generates. Venture capitalists put in millions of dollars, then give away the product for unrealistic prices with the expectation that that will increase user adoption. Which it does, everyone loves something for nothing. Then they expect to be able to monetize it later on to recover their losses taken in the initial period.

In Ning's case that seams to be what is happening, they've been using Venture capital to subsidize community creation, monetizing it hasn't worked, now their trying to back out of that idea to a non-money-loosing one and that's generated the current mess.

After reading up on Ning, I ask myself why Marc Andreessen is still Chairman of Ning? Besides being the founder of Ning, I have no idea why he remains the chairman of a network with only 90K customers. IMO it's really below him to be the Chairman - he's one of the top VCs in SV.

My best guess is that Facebook is going to start buying social networks in the future. MA is on the Facebook board and was very influential basically a mentor to Zuck. Maybe FB has something in the plans for the future to go up against Wordpress??? - a standalone Facebook platform for sites??? MA might be hoping for Ning to be bought from Mode Media who is the current owner of Ning. Though to get purchased you need to show some profit to establish a valuation. Cutting overhead (employees) and charging is one way to do that.

Ning started out as a platform for adult porn sites- started losing money when they moved away from it ( and banned them from their platform)- thought they could monetize 2 million free networks with Google Adsense....people dont click on those ads like they once did...previous buyers came in to just rape the resources..(I think) maybe choice servers and personel...I think whats left is what didnt get cherry picked...always been my opinion anyway

updated by @derrickhand300: 09/12/16 09:24:57PM