Does any one still recall this post? http://tcrn.ch/d05cE7
It has just been a little bit over a month…
As to business social networking as opposed to personal social networking site, this is a cool one to try, check it out http://bit.ly/cYAyUw

That girl must have some mad skills…

We’ve built a business social network on Ning and couldn’t be happier with the platform – http://www.finance30.com

Yep, but they left out one big fact: no exit and they are about to get put out of business by Facebook Pages. Do some reporting please!

“Ning Networks span every area of human endeavor”

I think they meant ‘spam’

What sets Ning apart? http://bit.ly/d44P7i

Hopefully she will have the capacity to reach into her social cookie jar and pull out a rising star to invest in and showcase to the world. Ning needs one social leader site that helps pull all the other ning sights. Fragmentated social sites are not the future of social in any way shape or form. Ning has bottomless potential but is slow to innovate. Too many geriatric restrictions on the user interface templates, that weaken the experience in favor of the pageview.

For someone that has been around for 5 years and through the hard times. To leave when they seem to be on an uphill stretch is just lame and stupid. I think there is much more to her leaving then meets the eye… Thoughts?

All talk with nothing to show – That is what Ning and Gina was. The sad part was what did they do with $119 million? How incompetent can you get? Give that to 50 startups and you have something to show. Sick.

I agree with Mike D. Sad waste of a LOT of money. A company like this should raise somewhere around 20MM…at most. Silicon Valley tends to forget there are kids who can’t eat, and disease stricken places around the world! $119 MILLION..WTF!

Its about time. She spends all her time in Davos and the like goofing off with investor money instead of working in Palo Alto to build a real company

Did you say $119M. THAT is a lot of money.

Gina started off well, though she took an aggressively protective approach during one of the biggest controversies of her times (Widgetlabs) which affected NC adversely to certain extent (though I don’t deny it being the need of the time for NING).

I think I first heard about Jason when the gifts features was announced, there was some backlash when it was imposed on the networks without prior announcement however he handled that situation quite well.

To be honest, I am more optimistic about NING’s development under Jason than I was under Gina.
I wish Gina all the very best and I am eager to hear from Jason about the roadmap ahead.
Jason Congratulations !!

OK so this is what it sounds like:

1. Gina was fired. Probably because has no serious revenue.
2. In order to save face they made her EIR at Andreessen. EIR is like saying she is a consultant.

How do you know that they have nothing to show? I’m sure they’re getting page views. They *may* be monetizing well for all we know.

Is it odd that she was on Charlie Rose four days ago…swan song? She was ok, didn’t make a great impression. She talked about Ning being an immersive experience…yuck.

ning has been a massive waste of money (and a lot of it to be sure) and a complete non-event for the web.

ning could lose their domain tomorrow and no one would care

I’m still getting spammed on a monthly basis by recruiters for Ning. It’s hard not to chuckle every time Ning comes up. Who would want to work for a company that after 5 years still hasn’t really done anything particularly compelling, and doesn’t even have revenue to show for it? And to top it off, from what I’ve heard, they treat their employees like slaves.

finance30 is a very well designed ning site.

http://www.checkswing.com is one that I use to get info for coaching my son’s baseball team.

When you have $119 M, pageview means nothing. Here’s an example. Digg had $40MM and 6.5 times more unique visitors compared to Ning who spent $119 M.

When you get $119 M, pageview is pretty much the basic ‘given’ expectation. What is mostly expected is Innovation, Products and Competitiveness. It would be nice to see Ning coming up with something cool or something that wow’s people, and not some stale 2003 technology. That is why $119 M could have been used on other startups who are constantly innovating and creating new products.

Poor investment decisions from VC’s have been starving sick kids around the world for years. I blame CMGI and eToys for the current state of Haiti. The former Yugoslavia was ripped asunder by the Atari Jaguar fiasco. It’s a shame.

Yes, but when’s the last time you saw a website hosting provider going public or giving a good return on $119M investment?

I must have been under a rock. The first time I heard of Gina was on Saturday when I read the one page puff piece on her workout routine in WSJ Magazine. Too bad she was sent to the guillotine right around this time.

Sites like Ning are only good for massaging the ego of the person that starts the group. Then invitations go to his or her friends who reluctantly join to please the owner and do nothing. Most of them become like tomb stones that you rarely visit. A site like Ning should have more open groups (searchable and indexable by Google and other search engines) that share revenue and build social capital and reputation for all participants; not just the owner of the group!

smells like she was pushed out. No exit strategy, an increasingly crowded field, and still the delusion that whatever Andreesen touches is gold. Ever visited Ning hq? Fat, dumb, and happy … .with other people’s money.

Finally a hot CEO!

lots of haters out there. sometimes you have to change the guard to get to the next level. impressive traffic numbers. the $120m is out of control but that’s the VCs not her. i’m sure she got good valuations from the “braintrust” VCs. yes facebook is sucking the life out of many startups, maybe yours as well soon.

I think Ning could monetize on B2B market, such as better online collaboration, content management…not only by backfilled google adsense ads or consumer product updates…

I think it’s bad form to hassle a company for wasting $119M before they’ve actually spent it. A lot of people in this thread are confusing Ning having raised $119M with how much they’ve spent. AFAIK, nobody has ever reported how much they’ve spent or the full terms under which that money was raised. It’s certainly an eye opening amount, but it could just mean that they have a much longer runway than your average startup.

Have to agree with that. If you all noticed Andreesen left Ning more than a year ago. He must have known way back then that this was headed in the wrong direction.

[...] Gina Bianchini Replaced As Ning CEO By COO Jason Rosenthal [...]

Ning has changed a lot since launching our network in mid 2007. Our network grew to over 100k members then stopped with growth the last year.

The company has no direction, no innovation, and the platform is very limiting to what can be done on it.

The downtime maintenance issues during peak hours, poor customer support, and “speediness” of releasing cutting-edge new features is the reason we are deleting our network of 130k+ members and starting fresh with a new platform.

There is no sense of urgency to get things done. They just launched a way to share with Facebook.. That should have been done over a year ago.

I wish Ning and Gina the best.

Gina was Marc’s girlfriend awhile ago. And then CEO of Ning. And Ning got clobbered by Facebook.

Ning began as a “clone” site. It offed you your own Craigslist clone, Myspace clone, etc.

Not one of TechCrunch “reporters” reported that. JOURN101 at De Anza Community College has a few slots for TechCrunch writers.

Omg look at her fingers!!! It’s an alien,,,am I the only one noticing this???

Seconded on the slave comment. Heard that from someone I know who is (was?) working there and looking to leave. They are pretty senior.

Yeah, awesome work place. Employees are encouraged to take short lunches, and to not go to the gym.

Totally true – the subsidized gym memberships are actually refunded and funneled into Gina’s Davos trip fund.

Ning has been bleeding top talent for awhile…

This is such a blatant PR move, its disgraceful. What does Ning have to show for its massive capital?

Well when they spend it all, they’re out of business right?

I don’t see any other way of looking at this other than that she is a failure. She failed in her most important duty of providing a return for investors. That makes you a failure as a CEO. Maybe she’s hott or smart or brilliant or whatever, but she failed as a CEO. Anyone who gives her another chance deserves to lose their money.

Yes. If she only would have had daily manicures instead of working 24/7. You’re a dumbass.

You are a complete and utter dumbass. Ning raised VC money and is still in growth stages. It has not gone out of business. It has not gone public. It has not been sold. So its investors money is still being used. Used wisely or not? Who knows? All companies go through stages that require different leadership. There are very very very few companies that can succeed with the Day One CEO. She’s hardly a failure. And quit posting here Zuckerberg.

I think you missed the biggest opportunity of your life at Davos or maybe you didn’t… ;)

I think she is hardly a failure. Ning has serious potential to be something very impressive but the company cannot figure out its direction.

I think they screwed up by starting off as a Semi “White Label” solution for networks… Now those networks (including mine) are leaving because they care more about helping the little dinky hobby networks.

Gina is not a failure at all IMO.

Sorry, but “still in growth stages” ? 5+ years with no discernable revenue, a feature set 1-2 years behind the trends, stagnant interest, ceo fired/reassigned, and bleeding talent. Where in there is there anything resembling growth? The only growth is the amount of VC money they’re wasting.

[...] Gina Bianchini Replaced As Ning CEO By COO Jason Rosenthal [...]

Where are you leaving to? I’m curious what the best option is for larger sites. I always figured that once a network hit 100k users it would start qualifying as viable business and should move to it’s own site and servers.

I like ceo who are women, just don’t say the name carol bartz and we should be fine.

Ning’s popularity is starting to diminish today.. Hopefully it won’t end like that deadlast networking site called Friendster.

Why do you guys all talk like she spent your money?

Even if your were the VC, you are not forced to give her your money. And if you decided to invest and not happy with the result, who are you to blame other than yourself?

More likely you don’t have millions of dollars to invest, nor have you been a successful entrepreneur ever. So what makes you feel so confident to voice your comment so loudly with fragments of info/rumor you’ve heard?

Enough said.

45 million registered users / 2.3 million networks = nearly 20 users / network. Giddy up!

@Tony – yeah, 100k users probably justifies a dedicated site and server. Now, if Ning could grow by 5,000 times so that each of those baby networks they’ve hatched could leave the nest to flourish on their own. Just increase the population of the world by 37x, add water, rinse and repeat.

If only we could invent a system where each person could have their own social network, with some sort of “brain” to manage it, capable of making connections with other brains, constantly evolving, learning, teaching…and we could let them reproduce, spawning new social networks using a genetic algorithm to improve upon the previous generation. Each network supporting it’s family of offspring, at that point things gets serious, the investors get antsy, all the servers and free lunches, and music lessons, and doctor’s appointments don’t come for free, time to start making money, maybe we could use some sort of virtual economy…..just imagine it, wouldn’t that be great?

From LinkedIn:

September 1990 – June 1994
Stanford University – BA Political Science

August 1994 – January 1996 (1 year 6 months)
Financial Analyst, High Technology Group
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Public Company; 1001-5000 employees; GS; Investment Banking industry

How do you get from a BA Political Science into Financial Analyst at Goldman Sachs & Co?

She must have had good friends.

Dodged a bullet at Davos, if you know what I mean… ;)

Welcome to Earth. Are you new here?

there are some good ning sites, that you might know are ning sites.

spill.com is pretty good, a moview review community out of Austin.

also i see some advantages to being part of seperate communities outside of facebook.com, for instance a dating site, or a readers/writers group, or some kind of group where you can be open and honest, yet not use your real name, like perhaps a therapeutic community like an online AA community.

I tried ning, but it just seems too bulky and its difficult to read. I’m not sure if its the font or the layout. The layout is too unorganized to be coherent.

Well… Ning just has too much competition and it’s going to be hard for them to do on a cost per basis what someone can do with a solution like BuddyPress or with Facebook pages for free. Ning closed up way to much at a crucial time in their development and the serious minded entrepreneurs that started with Ning left over the last few years. In addition attempts to woo musicians have yielded mixed results.

I think if all Gina could do to make revebue was cine up with ideas like gifts then it made a lot of sense to dump her.

I think there are a few things Ning needs to do to survive including…

1. RE Opening up the API to third party app makers.

2. Offering more and deeper levels of control/customization for their Network Creators.

3. Get out of the “Free” business and trying to cater to the non serious “groups”.

4. Integrate with everybody including Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and Google Buzz

Notice how she always talks about not having competitors?

From what I’ve been told, many of the keen hobbyists that are looking for ‘free’ networks are leaving for the buddypress platform. Well, those with enough geek skill to use wordpress, that is

More importantly, the big premium networks that are happy paying for a service are leaving for SocialGO.

SocialGO specialize in the premium model and it’s no secret that their new version is going to address all the platform needs (read API) that the big (revenue generating) networks need.

Plus, the slight matter that with ning you don’t own the data. What sort of serious business would set up a network where you don’t own your own member base and content?

Going to be interesting to see how ning fights back against these competitors

[...] Blog Post about Ning | Gina Bianchini leaves Ning [...]

>> Andreessen notes that Ning will continue on the same course under Rosenthal. <<

Now that's funny.

[...] should have seen it coming last month when CEO Gina Bianchini left and was replaced by Jason Rosenthal.  Now he’s ending Ning’s relationship with about a [...]

[...] a month ago social networking platform Ning announced that it was no longer going to provide free platforms for its members. Existing social networks are going to have to start paying for a premium service [...]

[...] the popular social network, has decided to shut the doors on its free services and offer only premium content. All of its existing free social networking [...]

[...] two months, Ning has been making some drastic changes. In March, longtime CEO Gina Bianchini was replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal. Then, less than three weeks ago, Ning’s bubble burst — the company [...]

[...] have been tumultuous for social network platform Ning. In March, longtime CEO Gina Bianchini was replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal. And less than three weeks ago, Ning’s bubble burst — the company [...]

[...] have been tumultuous for social network platform Ning. In March, longtime CEO Gina Bianchini was replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal. And less than three weeks ago, Ning’s bubble burst — the company [...]

[...] Bianchiniが去り、新たにCOOのJason [...]