I have been teaching alternatively certified first-year teachers every spring for the last four years. I have used virtual learning environments (e.g. Blackboard), wikis, and online bulletin boards to organize the hybrid course but this year I wanted to try something new: I am conducting the course using a social network. Since I needed a platform that would allow me to "close the gate" since the discussion we have in the forums is not for public consumption, I settled on Ning and have been more than pleased with the results. In fact, I was so impressed with Ning's delivery that I started a second social network to host an educational community at my school (instead of a course in one of our MOODLE sites).
But then I saw the blog post by Jason Rosenthal. Apparently Ning is closing its doors to free sites. I'm not sure of Ning's new business model. They were founded by offering free social networks that theoretically led to people choosing to opt for the paid version (due to availability of premium features). How does closing free sites help them? It looks to me like a short-term solution to a long-term cash-flow problem, because eventually I think they are going to have a hard time recruiting new social networks. They are simply removing a mechanism that drives traffic to the site in the first place. If cashflow is an issue, why isn't Ning concentrating on advertising revenue? That method has served Google pretty well.
Ning, you have a quality product, but I will not pay for something that should be ad supported. Come May 4, I'm abandoNING my social networks (even the ones I'm only a member in).
1 comments:
I agree, I'm not sure what they are thinking but the whole incident left me with a bad taste in my mouth. They didn't go about it in the right way. I understanding needing to turn a profit to stay viable, but if that is the case, don't wait, start that way. Maybe they underestimated how large they would grow. My guess is, they just offered other platforms a lot of new supporters.
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