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Ning Now Allows Network Creators To Charge For Premium Access And Subscriptions

Leena Rao — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:20:10 +0000

Ning is rolling out a new feature to network creators today—the ability to charge for premium access and subscriptions. The company says it is one of the most requested features and Ning will be making paid access available to all network creators over the next several weeks.

Ning is leveraging PayPal’s API to allow network creators to simply implement a subscription or paid access on their site. Users have control over how and where they want to use Paid Access on their networks.Potential use cases include membership dues, paid groups, paid content and donations. Users can set a fixed cost or a subscription based cost as well using PayPal.

The cost to implement paid access for network creators will be $19.95 per month for all plans and Ning will also charge small service charge (between 3 and 4 percent) to cover PayPal’s processing fees.

Ning CEO Jason Rosenthal tells me that the company continues to grow in terms of engagement and reach. Ning now has over 90,000 networks created and international markets are particularly strong, with 40 percent of the company’s revenue coming from outside the U.S. In fact, the company is supporting payments in a number of currencies beyond the U.S. dollar, including the British Pound, Mexican Peso, the Euro and the Australian dollar.

Ning And Ustream Launch In-Depth Integration To Allow Creators To Stream Live Video

Leena Rao — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 16:45:52 +0000

Ning and live stream video company Ustream are announcing an integrated partnership today that allows Ning network creators to broadcast live video and audio on their website at anytime, complete with live chat capabilities and more.

With the integration, live video content can easily be embedded networks hosted by Ning, allowing users to broadcast via Ustream. Not only can users embed Ustream channels into Ning websites, but creators can also add an indicator to the site to alert visitors of a live broadcast. In addition, the integration allows for live chats during streaming.

Ustream is available to all Ning Plus and Pro subscribers, and also includes automatic access to previously uploaded Ustream files, directly from the site management screens.It’s important to note that Ustream creators could previously add Ustream live video streams through an OpenSocial plugin, but this integration is a deeply integrated, native experience for creators that adds new functionality such as live chat and more.

A number of Ning Creators will begin live-streaming video to their members today including band Weezer, which will be streaming a Q&A and Pre-Show Warm-up from a concert in Austin.

Ning Launches Slick New Mobile Social Tool Called Mogwee

Michael Arrington — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 02:55:48 +0000

Mogwee launches this evening, an ambitious new product from Ning unrelated to its core social networking service. It’s a new social/communications tool that’s built from the ground up for mobile platforms, beginning with iOS for iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads.

For now, Mogwee’s main feature is to let you have on the fly public and private instant message-like conversations with people via the app. It updates in real time allowing for synchronous conversations, or you can wait for notifications to come in to have a more asynchronous experience.

Unlike most new services we see, there’s no friending or following with Mogwee. If you invite someone to the service, or interact with them in a group “hangout,” you can then have one on one conversations with them. It ends up being very similar to services that have mutual friending, but it worked effortlessly in my testing without al the hassle of adding and removing friends.

For one one on communications it works a lot like text messaging, albeit with a synchronous flow that makes it more fun to use. In group hangouts, though, it really shines. If you want to have a quick group chat with some friends or coworkers from your mobile, this is something you’ll enjoy using. You can also post pictures and videos, give gifts, and do fun stuff like throw zombie sheep at each other.

I’ve tested Mogwee on iOS and have been using it over the weekend via an unlaunched Android version that works quite well (you’ll have to wait a while for the Android version to be released publicly). You can download it here for iOS now, though. And you can also use the browser version at Mogwee.com. You have to actually create your account via your phone, though, before you can use the browser version.

Try it out. At first it just seems like another fun chat application. But it’s actually quite a useful chat and productivity tool that is almost certainly finding a permanent home on my phone.

Ning Ramps Up Network Engagement With Likes, New Themes, And More

Leena Rao — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 15:55:45 +0000

2010 was a transformative year for Ning, with the social network platform shuttering its freemium model in favor of all-paid services for network creators. The company rolled out the paid models, unveiled a number of new features for content creators, called Ning Everywhere, and saw an uptick in the number of paid subscribers. CEO Jason Rosenthal says that Ning finished the year with 80,000 paying subscribers, with new customer acquisition up 30 percent from a year ago. Today, Ning is launching a number of new features aimed towards increasing network engagement and interaction.

One of the most important additions to Ning networks is the newly launched Ning Engagement System, which provides creators with intelligence on member activity level, identifies loyalists, and gathers insights on popular content or activities on networks. Ning also allows creators to add a Ning “like” button that allows visitors to vote up popular content. And Ning now gives network creators the option to add Facebook’s Like button easily on their social networks, although the two types of Like buttons could be a little confusing for members.

Additionally, Ning is unveiling the Ning Design Studio, which includes new ways for creators to customize the look and feel of networks. The studio includes 80 different customization settings to change the design of networks, a theme gallery, new layouts, and a design marketplace which will eventually allow users to sell their designs to network creators.

Rosenthal says that the company is looking for ways to help creators make networks a primary social destination for their members. He adds that Ning will be making a mobile product announcement soon and will also be rolling out “transformative” monetization options at end of Q1.
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The Seven Principles You Need to Know to Build a Great Social Product

Contributor — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 19:19:26 +0000

Social products are an interesting bird. For even the most experienced product designer, social products prove an elusive lover. While there are many obvious truths in social products, there are also alot of ways to design them poorly. Especially when you are deep in the moment making pixel-level decisions trying to remember what’s important, things may not be so clear.

The only magic I’ve found in designing compelling social products that have the best shot at breaking through the noise and capturing people’s time and money is in being extremely clear on how your social product meets a few key design principles.

1. Design your product to matter in a world of infinite supply. In 2010, people are inundated with an overwhelming number of people, applications, requests, alerts, relationships, and demands on their time. You love your product. The benefits of it are totally obvious to you. However, if you and every member of your team can’t crisply articulate what emotional benefit someone will get from spending 15 minutes on your social product that they can’t get on Facebook, LinkedIN, or Twitter, you’ve got work to do.

This isn’t touchy feely stuff. Neither I nor the prospective people who may use your social product care about your features, your game mechanics, or how amazing your application will be when there are millions of people on it. I’m selfish with my time and you’ve got seconds to hook me in with something new. And I’m not alone.

To successfully use the fleeting moments you have, you need to orchestrate everything under your control to work together seamlessly under a single brand with a single reason for existence. Make it emotional. If your team can’t tie back every decision they are making to the emotion you want people to feel when they are using your social product, then your reason for existence isn’t strong enough to serve its role, which is to guide your team and the product decisions you are making.

2. Be the best in the world at one thing. To put an even finer point on the focus required of any social upstart, you need to be best in the world at one thing. For Lululemon, they’ve built a $450 million annual revenue business by focusing on the black yoga pant. For Twitter, it’s the 140 character message. For Facebook, it is connecting you to the people you already know. Everything these companies do ties back to a specific thing they are going to be best in the world at doing.

It’s not always obvious upfront what should be your best in the world focus and enshrining the wrong thing can be a problem. However, it is much worse to build a social product without guiding principles. When you are focused on the one thing your social product is going to do better than everyone else, all you need to launch is your one thing and no more.

Ask yourself and every member of your team what you are best in the world at every week. Even better, define it, agree on it, print it out, blow it up, and put it on the wall. This should be the filter by which everyone is making product decisions.

3. Seek out uniqueness. Today’s social platforms and applications are fantastic at meeting people’s need to belong. But equally important – especially in a world of infinite supply – is what makes us feel different and special. People want scarcity. People want exclusivity. This doesn’t mean your social product should be limited to a niche. Frontierville was built for mass appeal – so that I could play with ALL of my friends – but it still finds ways to bring uniqueness into its social experience via neighbors, customization of your plot, and collections.

When people talk about exclusivity and scarcity these days, discussions of game mechanics are never far behind. I love game mechanics as much as the next person. However, if you are implementing game mechanics in the exact same way as everyone else, you’ve got a problem. It goes back to the issue of infinite supply. If there is an infinite supply of points, badges, and levels because they exist on every single social product out there, the minute you use them without being thoughtful, you are losing your shot at exclusivity and scarcity. A better approach is to figure out what makes people feel unique and special on your service independent of any specific game tactic. Then, selectively cherry pick the features that reinforce your emotional reason for existence for people. For uniqueness to work, you have to lead, not follow.

4. Focus on your most important interaction until you have it right. Once you have the critical features defined, there is typically one interaction that is clearly the most important to get right. It’s the interaction that if you get right means someone comes back and, if you don’t get it right, you can’t realize your full potential. Take this interaction and be maniacal about it. For Twitter, this is the Twitter stream. For Polyvore, this is the set page. For Facebook, this is the news feed. For YouTube, it’s the video page. For Dailybooth, it’s the live feed page. It’s the interaction where your magic happens, so give it the care and feeding needed to make it a star.

5. Choose your words carefully. The earlier you are as a social product, the more your word choice should be different and distinct from everything else out there. Early on is the time to have something important and different to say. In fact, all the great brands of the past 30 years have started out appealing to the passionate and rebellious first. Virgin? Sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Apple? The 1984 commercial. Nike? The subculture of intense runners sporting moustaches. Facebook? A few still remember the original Scarface logo.

There are things to copy from other services and there are things to make uniquely your own in social products. Layouts? Do your best but pay attention to what is already working. Colors? Hard to be original here, but blue is pretty played out. Icons? A toss up. Terminology? Own it. Your word choice is the primary place for you to have a point-of-view and present not only what you want your brand to emotionally mean to the people using it but the kinds of relationships you want people to have as a result of using your social product.

6. Create a party, not a museum. Great social products are clean, simple, and fast. The successful ones have little design flare, so that the people, photos, videos, text, and comments are front and center. The more design you add from colors to treatments, non-web-fonts, and graphics, the less your social application will feel like a party and the more it will feel like a museum. Or a magazine. Neither are a great goal. You want your social product to feel like it is a living and breathing party, not expensive furniture you’re not supposed to sit on.

7. Develop relationships, not features. Today, we have multiple personalities and different types of relationships with people in the real and virtual worlds. If you are going to design a new social product, it’s not enough to just offer a feature, like photos, videos, or events. You need to look at how the relationships on your social product will be important and different from the relationships you and others have already on Facebook, LinkedIN, and Twitter.

Most people will say that Facebook Connect handle the whole “people” thing for any new social product. I would argue that Facebook Connect is a start but if you can’t quickly show someone a new relationship dynamic or similar people in your social product in a way that is unique to your application, the value of people interacting in your new product will accrue back to Facebook and not you.

For example, I’ve found that on most new social applications I join I have the same 10 Facebook friends – typically my most prolific friends on Facebook already – on this new service too. In most cases, because these new social applications are just an extension of the things I’m already following them do on Facebook, such as sharing photos, events, lists, and videos, I don’t have a reason to come back to this new application a second time.

For a new social product, you need to think about how your social product expands, deepens, and changes the relationships people have today online and in the real world. This isn’t easy to achieve. The best example of a social product doing this well is Quora. Originally seeded with Facebook’s social graph, it has quickly differentiated itself by showing you people you may care about because of their thoughtful commentary, experience, and expertise displayed on topics that are important to you.

It takes alot for people to care about new people in the context of a new social product. Spending your time and energy on what constitutes similarity or what new relationships you want people to have as a result of your application is time worth spent.

As I think about what’s going to be created, discovered, invented, and re-imagined with social software in the next six months let alone the next five years, I can’t help but be excited. These principles shine a light on the first few feet in front of us, but, with every new social product success there will be new ones. As Alan Kay timelessly put it, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it.” I, for one, can’t wait to see what’s next.

Gina Bianchini is the founder of Ning, the leading online platform for the world’s organizers, activists and influencers to create their own social experiences with over 80 million unique users each month.

Ning Partners With Janrain To Offer Social Sign-Ins To Users

Leena Rao — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 17:30:34 +0000

Ning is partnering with user management platform for the social web Janrain to offer Ning Creators the ability to add social login and invite friends features to their members

Ning will offer creators the ability to use Janrain Engage, which allows an app developer’s visitors to sign-in to the app with their existing accounts on Facebook, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, LinkedIn or other networks and then publish their comments, purchases, reviews or other activities from the app to multiple social networks. Janrain Engage will also remembers an app user’s preferred network on return visits and will provide a single-click return experience.

The integration will essentially eliminate the need for the initial registration process and Ning login creation. While visitors can now log-in to Ning networks with existing their existing social network logins, Janrain will provide Ning Creators with profile data of their users.

Ning has steadily been offering ways for creators to expand their userbase and add innovative apps to their networks, most recently allowing the ability to create mobile apps, branded content and more. Janrain’s log-in system will allow users to offer the ability to perhaps broaden the number of users on the platform by accepting other log-ins.

Ning Gets Its Groupon On

Erick Schonfeld — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 15:51:12 +0000

Here come the Groupon partnerships. In what may be the first of several big distribution deals aimed at cementing its lead in social commerce, Groupon and Ning are launching an affiliate beta program today. Anyone who runs a Ning social network can now add a Groupon widget with geo-targeted daily deals. They will get a cut of any Groupon deals purchased through their Ning sites, and Groupon will extend its reach potentially to tens of thousands of new sites with strong communities who perhaps would like to start buying things together. The program is in limited beta now, and will be rolled out as an option for all Ning sites by early next year.

Besides Ning, Groupon may soon strike similar deals with Yahoo, eBay and Citysearch. The goal is to become the de facto brand for daily deals.

As we’ve noted before, there is a lot of competition in the daily deal space and there is a real danger that margins could one day collapse. Although, it’s hard to say what the saturation point is for these types of offers. One of the best things Groupon has going for it is its first-mover advantage, amazing economics, and its growing brand. These types of partnerships are all about blowing out distribution even bigger than Groupon can do on its own. The margins will be smaller, just as with all affiliate networks, but it is the same strategy Amazon pursued successfully with its affiliate program, or even Google with AdSense.

Ning Everywhere Debuts With Third-Party Extensions, Mobile Apps And More

Leena Rao — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 03:59:41 +0000

Tonight, social network platform Ning is giving users a new, more customizable way to interact with their social networks with the launch of Ning Everywhere.

Ning CEO Jason Rosenthal says that network creators were asking for three major improvements in the Ning experience. First, users wanted to be able to take experience of Ning and bring it to any device. Second, creators wanted to take data and content from their networks and use this data outside of Ning. And third, users wanted to be able to write custom apps on top of networks that add functionality and features to networks that Ning doesn’t provide. Thus, Ning Everywhere was born.

The first part of Ning Everywhere involves mobile applications. Ning has developed partnerships with several mobile application creation platforms, including Mobile Roadie, Double Dutch and AppMakr, to allow network creators to create branded iPhone and Android apps for Ning Networks. For example, Mobile Roadie developed the Linkin Park iPhone app that includes integration with the band’s Ning network.

Ning Everywhere’s second pillar involves Ning Extensions which allows network creators to integrated Seesmic, Constant Contact, Aviary, and Skimlinks on Ning Networks. Ning already added branded product creator Cafepress and social gaming startup HeyZap as ways for creators to monetize off of the site.

Seesmic’s integration allows users to follow a Ning network activity from Seesmic’s desktop application as well as post status updates to networks. Email marketing software Constant Contact allows network creators to integrate member contact information into the service and also enabled delivery of email newsletters. Design suite application Aviary gives network creators graphic design and audio and effects editing tools. And Skimlinks will give users the ability to run affiliate marketing campaigns, giving creators the ability to automatically convert words and normal links into affiliate links.

Lastly, with a new version of the Ning API, Network Creators can build their own applications off of the platform.

Ning has been through a tumultuous year, suffering layoffs and shuttering its free service. In May, Ning rolled out the different paid models for its platform, Ning Pro, Ning Plus and Ning Mini. But the dust has finally settled and Ning is seeing a large uptick in its paid subscribers.

The platform now has over 70,000 paid subscribers, up from 15,000 from before transition from the freemium model. Rosenthal says that the network is currently seeing 80 million monthly unique visitors globally.

It's A WinWin, Grou.ps Launches Referral Program For Ning Exiles

Contributor — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 15:02:39 +0000

Hoping to cash in further on Ning's shuttering of its free version, competitor Grou.ps is upping the ante with the launch of "WinWin", a referral program directly targeting so-called Ning exiles. The service claims to have already migrated more than 50,000 Ning networks, making it the largest "do-it-yourself social networking platform", and hopes to continue this trend by rewarding new converts and those who encourage others to follow suit. Specifically, Grou.ps will be dishing out credits which can be converted into a host of premium features such as extra bandwidth. The size of the reward is proportional to the size of the migrated network so the bigger the switcher, the more credits awarded to both the referrer and the owner of the converted network.

Ning Partners With Pearson To Sponsor Free Network Access For Educators

Leena Rao — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:52:40 +0000

When Ning shuttered its free service for creating social networks back in April, educators and schools who were using the platform expresses their concern at the company’s decision to include educations networks created by schools and colleges in this group. When Ning eventually rolled out its premium pricing structure in May, the company announced that it had partnered with an education company to sponsor networks for primary and secondary educators but didn’t reveal the name of the sponsor. Today, Ning is announcing that Pearson, a education-focused publishing company, is sponsoring network costs for Ning Mini platforms for educators come July. Ning says the partnership will extend for three years. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Ning.com currently hosts 6,500 K-12 and 2,100 Higher Ed social networks, and range from platforms for teachers, individual schools and classes to alumni groups. Pearson will now be assuming the costs for all of these groups to use a Ning Mini model, which have access to Ning’s core features including, blogs, photos, forums and video embeds, and the added ability to run custom advertising. The price for Ning Mini is $2.95 per month or $19.95 per year.

Any teacher or network creator can now apply to have a Pearson-sponsored network here, and will be able to freely use a Ning Mini network when approved. Of course, the network will have some Pearson branding on it. Where a network would show that it is a “Ning” hosted network, will now indicate that it is a “Ning hosted Network Sponsored By Pearson.” Clicking on this icon will take you to a Pearson network on Ning’s platform.

And these educational networks will be able to monetize through the same channels as other networks on Ning’s platform. Last week, Ning announced new revenue streams for network creators, including partnerships with branded product creator CafePress and social gaming startup Heyzap, to offer monetization options to Network Creators. Custom CafePress shops can now be integrated directly into Ning Networks, offering creators the opportunity to sell branded products, like mugs, t-shirts and more, to members and fans. With Heyzap, Ning creators can add Heyzap pay-to-play games onto their networks. Creators will earn 10% of all revenue from premium game purchases. Ning has also partnered with Chipin to allow non-profit creators to raise funds and collect donations from members.

Educational networks can also serve advertising on their sites, says CEO Jason Rosenthal. Ning offers a Run Your Own Ads option that allows creators to collect revenue from running display advertisements in their site.

The deal with Pearson is a win for Ning, which faced criticism from network creators following the elimination of the free model. The UK-based Pearson owns the world’s largest education publishing business as well as the Financial Times and Penguin books. And the publishing company has struck other partnerships with big-name technology companies, including Nokia.

For Ning, it’s clear that educators and their networks are a priority. Amidst financial turmoil and a redirection in strategy at the company, Rosenthal has been steadfast in his commitment to keeping Ning free for educators. In April, Ning told The New York Times that “the decision to exempt teachers from subscription fees was made after discussions with teachers about the barriers to getting even small amounts of money approved by school system.” It would be interesting to see of other non-profit groups that host networks on Ning ask for a similar deal. And perhaps these types of sponsorships with big name companies are a way for Ning to create a revenue stream.

After Going Premium, Ning Adds E-Commerce And Gaming Revenue Channels For Networks

Leena Rao — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 15:59:58 +0000

It’s been no secret that social network platform Ning has been going through a significant transition in both its leadership and business model in 2010. In March, longtime CEO Gina Bianchini was replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal. And in April, Ning’s bubble burst — the company laid off 40% of its staff and killed off its free service. In May, Ning rolled out the different paid models for its platform, Ning Pro, Ning Plus and Ning Mini. And June brings new revenue streams for Ning’s social networks, in an effort to help Ning users monetize their social networks.

Ning is announcing two partnerships, with branded product creator CafePress and social gaming startup Heyzap, to offer monetization options to Network Creators. Custom CafePress shops can now be integrated directly into Ning Networks, offering creators the opportunity to sell branded products, like mugs, t-shirts and more, to members and fans. With Heyzap, Ning creators can add Heyzap pay-to-play games onto their networks. Creators will earn 10% of all revenue from premium game purchases. Ning has also partnered with Chipin to allow non-profit creators to raise funds and collect donations from members. A number of networks have already been experimenting with the new channels, including The Veloist, Duke City Fix, and TuDiabetes.

Of course, Ning is taking a cut of any revenue made through these channels (with the exception of funds collected through Chipin), but Rosenthal assures us that this cut is small and the majority of the revenue goes to the network creator. These revenue channels join Ning’s Run Your Own Ads option that allows creators to collect revenue from running display advertisements in their sites.

Rosenthal adds that this is the beginning of a string of revenue channels that Ning plans to open up for network creators. While he declined to name any future channels, he did say they would be in the areas of e-commerce, gaming, group buying and more. Rosenthal added that they would be exploring any channels that are currently working on other similar platforms.

It seems safe to infer that he probably meant channels that were working on Facebook, which could mean that Ning may get into the offers game as well, considering its success in social games and applications on Facebook.

It’s clear that Rosenthal seems to have big plans for Ning when it comes to revenue for the network and its creators. He has told us in the past that the DIY social network arena focusing on subscription model could represent a $4 billion plus revenue stream. It should be interesting to see if Ning can capture a portion of this anticipated cash.

Ning Goes Premium

Leena Rao — Tue, 04 May 2010 15:06:27 +0000

The past two months 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 laid off 40% of its staff and killed off its free service. Today the company, which ended its free service a few weeks ago, is rolling out the different paid models for its platform, Ning Pro, Ning Plus and Ning Mini.

Ning will be ending promotional links and will also offer a completely ad-free experience, with the option to run your own ads if you like. Ning is ending Ning ID and and will allow network creators to add Facebook and Twitter sign-in. The network will also offer API access to enable mobile and desktop application development. Creators will be able to add more homepage text boxes and RSS modules, provide access to premium content, as well as have improved header and footer control. Users can charge for membership and accept donations and will have access to analytics around member usage, content and demographics. Ning will now have 3 pricing plans, ranging from $3/month to $50/month. Here’s the breakdown of the plans:

* Ning Pro: Ning Pro Networks offer unlimited membership, full control over branding, multimedia options including music uploads and branded players, and advanced customization. Price: $49.95 / month or $ 499.95/ year

* Ning Plus: Ning Plus Networks provide unlimited membership, full control over branding, and features including events, groups, chat, pages and Ning Apps. Network Creators using Ning Plus will also have advanced customization options that include the ability to edit CSS, add Javascript and make use of a Language Editor. Price: $19.95 / month or $199.95 / year

* Ning Mini: Networks using Ning Mini have access to Ning’s core features including, blogs, photos, forums and video embeds, and the added ability to run custom advertising. Price: $2.95 / month or $19.95 / year

The tiered plans will be rolled out in July. Ning says that the new model will allow users to select which premium services they’d like to use, and possibly save users money as well. For example, the current premium model costs $55 per month and includes the option to Use Your Own Domain, Remove Create Links, and Run Your Own Ads. With the Ning Plus, you’ll be able to have them all for $19.95/month. Ning will also offer current Network Creators a one-time annual pricing discount. And for Ning Creators who use the free service that want to move to another service, Ning will offer a tool to export all of content.

Ning has also partnered with an education company that will be sponsoring Ning Mini Networks for educators in primary and secondary education, making Ning’s services free for certain educational institutions. Details on this partnership will be released soon.

Rosenthal says that 75 percent of traffic comes from users who are using premium services, and is confident that this new pricing structure will satisfy users’ needs. The subscription model is a start to opening up revenue streams, says Rosenthal. He adds that Ning will be rolling out new ad share models and premium advertising in the next few months that should add additional revenue streams. He says that the DIY social network arena focusing on subscription model could represent a $4 billion plus revenue stream and with the new features, Ning is providing the most meaningful platform to capitalize on this market.

Is Ning About To Launch Its Own AdSense? (Update: Nope)

Jason Kincaid — Mon, 03 May 2010 16:58:20 +0000

In the last 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 laid off 40% of its staff and killed off its free service.

Tomorrow, Ning intends to announce its plans for the future, including new features and pricing plans. And we think we may have just stumbled across one of them: a new advertising product that resembles AdSense. Maybe they will call it NingSense. Update: We’re hearing this actually went live a few months ago and is unrelated to tomorrow’s announcements. It appears to be part of a public service announcement campaign that links to charity sites and cause-oriented Ning networks.

Ning is apparently trying out some new ads that are “Powered By Ning”. TechCrunch reader (and Ning network creator) Rafael Sosa says that he’s just started seeing these on his network in place of some of the AdSense ads Ning typically runs. Each of the sites being promoted is also a Ning network — it’s unclear at this point if the Ning ads will be exlusively used to cross-promote other Ning networks, or if outside advertising will be accepted. But at the very least, Ning will be using these ads to send traffic across the Ning network. Small or new networks will presumably be able to buy these ads to drive traffic much like Facebook apps or iPhone apps buy ads on each other’s apps as a distribution-building mechanism.

Clicking on the words “Powered by Ning” takes you to the site http://www.ning.com/?psa=1, which is currently identical to the Ning homepage.

We’ll have more on this tomorrow.

Thanks to Rafael of Chat.pr for the tip

Grou.ps And Grouply Welcome Ning Refugees

Leena Rao — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:05:38 +0000

With yesterday’s news of Ning’s move to eliminate free social networks on its platform, competitors are rushing to emphasize their free offerings for building a social network. Today, Grouply, a startup that’s built around creating and managing online groups from Google and Yahoo Groups, is going to try to make it easy for Ning users to port their groups to Grouply’s platform. And fellow competitor Grou.ps is also welcoming Ning refugees to its free social network platform as well.

Grouply will shortly announce a more comprehensive ‘Ning to Grouply’ migration tool that will enable a Ning network owner to easily import other important content from their network, says Mark Robins, CEO and co-founder of Grouply.

Of course, there are slight differences between the functionality on the two sites but groups on Grouply provide many of the same core social features as Ning does, including a customizable community website, event management, discussion forums, an activity feed, and an app store with add-on applications.

Grou.ps also provides a similar platform to Ning. The startup’s networks are attractive to users because it lets you run all of your group’s collaboration tools from one GROU.PS domain using a single login. The system supports wikis, photos, links, blogs, calendars, chat, forums, maps, profiles, and subgroups – each of which is available as a plug-and-play module for your community. These modules also allow users to pull in their data from other third party services (flickr, Digg, blogs, etc).

But its important to note that Ning’s traffic and userbase is still much greater than both of these competitors. For example, Grou.ps has 2.8 million users, whereas Ning has at least 37 million users as of last November. And the number of Ning networks that migrate may not be too significant; 75% of Ning’s traffic already comes from premium accounts.

Ning's Bubble Bursts: No More Free Networks, Cuts 40% Of Staff

Jason Kincaid — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:46:15 +0000

One month after long-time Ning CEO Gina Bianchini was replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal, the company is making some major changes: It has just announced that it is killing off its free product, forcing existing free networks to either make the change to premium accounts or migrate their networks elsewhere. Rosenthal has also just announced that the company has cut nearly 70 people — over 40% of its staff. Here’s the email Rosenthal just sent out to the company:

Team,

When I became CEO 30 days ago, I told you I would take a hard look at our business. This process has brought real clarity to what’s working, what’s not, and what we need to do now to make Ning a big success.

My main conclusion is that we need to double down on our premium services business. Our Premium Ning Networks like Friends or Enemies, Linkin Park, Shred or Die, Pickens Plan, and tens of thousands of others both drive 75% of our monthly US traffic, and those Network Creators need and will pay for many more services and features from us.

So, we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity. We will phase out our free service. Existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning. We will judge ourselves by our ability to enable and power Premium Ning Networks at huge scale. And all of our product development capability will be devoted to making paying Network Creators extremely happy.

As a consequence of this change, I have also made the very tough decision to reduce the size of our team from 167 people to 98 people. As hard as this is to do, I am confident that this is the right decision for our company, our business, and our customers. Marc and I will work diligently with everyone affected by this to help them find great opportunities at other companies.

I’ve never seen a more talented and devoted team, and it has been my privilege to get to know and work with each and every one of you over the last 18 months.

We’ll use today to say goodbye to our friends and teammates who will be leaving the company. Tomorrow, I will take you through, in detail, our plans for the next three months and our new focus.

Thanks,
Jason Rosenthal

Ning’s announcement also says that it will be giving network creators more details in the next two weeks.

While the email talks about Free versus Premium paid networks, Ning actually has a variety of different premium upgrades. Currently, Ning’s premium options include support (which has a $10/month and $100/month options for different service levels); Custom domains ($5 a month); Extra storage and bandwidth ($10 a month); Ad removal ($25 a month) and the ability to hide any trace that you’re running on Ning ($25 a month).

As a result of today’s news I suspect we’ll see quite a few active networks jump to whatever the cheapest premium option is; I don’t expect Ning to make it especially easy to port their data to a different service. There will also certainly be a backlash from Ning’s vocal community of Network Creators, many of whom have invested quite of bit of time building out their niche networks.

While the massive layoffs are obviously a big hit to the company, it isn’t all bad news for Ning: the service is still seeing its traffic grow according to comScore (see graph below). But traffic growth is no longer good enough for the company — it needs to start generating some serious revenue, and advertising clearly isn’t cutting it. Ning has raised around $120 million, getting valuations of a half-billion dollars in April 2008 and a reported $750 million last summer.

The Davos (Or Is It Arrington?) Curse – People I Interviewed Are Getting Fired

Michael Arrington — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:31:33 +0000

The list of people I interviewed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland earlier this year is starting to look like more like a hit list than a VIP list. Two of them have been relieved of their current positions – MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta and now Ning CEO Gina Bianchini. If I were Jeremy Allaire, Max Levchin, Sheryl Sandberg or Evan Williams, I’d watch my back. They may be coming for you next.

Gina Bianchini Replaced As Ning CEO By COO Jason Rosenthal

Erick Schonfeld — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 15:32:36 +0000

Ning CEO Gina Bianchini is being replaced as the CEO of Ning by COO Jason Rosenthal. Bianchini founded the DIY network of social networks with Marc Andreessen. But after five and half years at the helm, she is ready to try something new. She will transition to an entrepreneur in residence role at Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm started by Andreessen.

In a blog post, Andreessen (who remains chairman of Ning) notes:

Ning today is one of the world’s top social networking properties, with more than 2.3 million user-created Ning Networks and more than 45 million registered users, and is far and away the market leading social platform for interests and passions. Ning Networks span every area of human endeavor, from the arts to business, politics to social activism, and every other field you can think of. Over 5,000 new Ning Networks are created every day, and we’re adding a million new registered users every 12 days

Over the past year, Ning’s unique worldwide visitors have doubled to 20.7 million, according to comScore, which is still much smaller than other social networks such as Hi5 (46.5 million) or LinkedIn (42.8 million). But at least it’s bigger than Friendster’s 15 million. Andreessen notes that Ning will continue on the same course under Rosenthal.

Bianchini appeared earlier this week on Charlie Rose, and we caught up with here recently at Davos where Mike interviewed her on video.

Win A Mentoring Session With Founders Of Digg, Flickr, Mint, Ning, Slide Or Zynga

Erick Schonfeld — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:40:00 +0000

Are you a budding Web entrepreneur who would like some pointers or advice from seasoned company founders? MayField Fund and First Round Capital are sponsoring a raffle to give away mentoring sessions with the founders of Digg (Jay Adelson), Flickr (Caterina Fake), Mint (Aaron Patzer), Ning (Gina Bianchini), Slide (Max Levchin), and Zynga (Mark Pincus).

The raffle will take place at a private event in Silicon Valley with space for 100 attendees on March 1. But you can win a ticket for the event by applying here. The event and raffle are free, but the 100 attendees in the running will be selected beforehand by partners at Mayfield and First Round.

Winners of the raffle do not get to become Best Friends Forever with the founders. But they will get one intense mentoring session each.

Davos Interviews: Ning CEO Gina Bianchini Insists Facebook Isn't A Competitor

Michael Arrington — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:13:33 +0000

Up next in our series of tech interviews at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week: Gina Bianchini, the CEO of social networking service Ning.

Ning has never had the press attention of Facebook and Twitter. But there are 41 million registered users on Ning, and Gina says that 92 million people a month worldwide visit Ning sites.

We spoke at length in the interview about how the world sees Ning, and how Ning defines itself. Anyone can easily create a Ning social network, cobranded or white labelled. 2.5 million of them have been created so far.

In some ways Ning networks are competitive to Facebook Pages (here’s the TechCrunch Facebook page). Both allow for a presence inside of a social network. And when faced with a choice, most may choose Facebook simply because it has so many hundreds of millions of users to help word spread virally.

Gina doesn’t see it this way. She notes that Facebook pages have limited features and are locked within Facebook itself. Ning allows for deep social experiences around brands and things. Instead of the product competing with Facebook (and Twitter, etc.), she sees Ning as the center of an ecosystem that includes all of these products. A fascinating excerpt from the interview:

MA: One place I personally think you do compete with Facebook is company pages. Companies set up a profile to get fans, and it’s not just their friends but they promote it, they put it on their advertisements. They also might do that with Ning whether it’s the Ning network or the domain mount and make it look all their own. They might do both but it seems like there’s a clear direct competition between Ning networks and Facebook pages. Agree, disagree, how do you see that?

GB: Absolutely disagree. I love the fact that there should be this perceived horserace, where one person wins and one person loses, and that’s just not how it’s working today. And what’s really cool is the fact…

MA: Do you see people doing both?

GB: Yeah, absolutely.

MA: That’s why you don’t think there’s competition?

GB: That’s why we can actually integrate with Twitter and use Twitter as a distribution channel. And basically send people very fluidly to Ning and then people are publishing from Ning into Twitter really effectively. And so what I think actually is happening , and we’re seeing this especially among people who are artists, and people who started in 2005 and 2006 with a myspace page, which is they basically look at it and they say, “ok, Facebook, myspace, Twitter, phenomenal for distribution. That is the place where I can put up a fan page and within a few hours I can have a million followers.” The same thing is true for twitter. So if you basically look at the people who have over a million followers, they are getting increasingly sophisticated in terms of understanding that those are phenomenal, but very lightweight distribution channels.

What they’re realizing and I think where the market is going is the sophistication around, where you’re sending people and where the destination is, whether that was originally a blog, or whether that was originally a website is actually becoming a rich immersive social experience.

MA: And now you’re talking about Ning?

GB: And now I’m talking about Ning.

MA: And a Facebook page isn’t as rich and immersive social experience.

GB: That’s not what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to give people away within Facebook to say, “I’m a fan of Pete Wentz and Fall Out Boy” or “I love Adidas.” I think that’s fantastic, but it’s very lightweight. It’s good that it’s lightweight because it means that people have a way to thread all of these ways that they want to interact with brands, with celebrities, with artists, with things that they truly care about. But I think where the market is going and where you’ll see more and more people do interesting things, is where is the hub, where are they sending people. And that is Ning.

For example, Soleil Moon Frye has 1.4 million Twitter followers and just launched a Ning network two days ago. And her excitement about it is that she can allow and enable the people following her on Twitter, primarily moms and young moms who have the same messy wonderful life as a mother that she does. That she gives them an opportunity to really dive deeper into what she cares about and what she’s passionate about, and really building that out as a small but very powerful lifestyle brand for moms.

And in fact Gina doesn’t think any of these companies – Facebook, Ning, Twitter, LinkedIn – really compete with each other. “Each one of them has gotten really comfortable and more narrowly focused on the thing they do better than anybody else,” she says later in the interview:

MA: (drawing diagram off camera) What you’re saying is that Ning is sort of the center. And you’ve got Facebook and Twitter and myspace. So that’s a good way of thinking about it. Do you think that Facebook, Twitter and myspace think about it that way?

GB: I don’t think they see us as a competitor. Here’s what I think is happening in the market. And this is not rainbows and sunshine saying this – what’s really interesting is that all of these companies were basically founded in 2005, 2006, 2007, and what’s actually happened is that each one of them has gotten really comfortable and more narrowly focused on the thing they do better than anybody else. Facebook with Facebook light is actually going more in the direction of connecting you with the people you have strong relationships with your real identity, with status messages, and with photo sharing. And they do that better than anybody else.

Twitter – and they had that year where, is Twitter a competitor or are they not – you can see in the past 6 months is that while there’s some overlap, it’s not a horserace, they’re not actually competing head to head where Facebook wins and Twitter loses. So Twitter’s about news and real time events.

You’ve seen the same thing with LinkedIn, where they’ve gotten really strong and have tremendous momentum by basically saying, “we own professional identity.” Professional identity has different characteristics than what you want to do with your friends on Facebook and that’s actually great. And then for us, interests and passions. If you look across the market, the thing that’s interesting is that none of these companies actually have a number two. And what gets confusing about it is, Facebook doesn’t have a number two. Twitter doesn’t have a number two. Linked In – you lived through that – all of the competitors are gone, and they are the dominant player. And in our case, we don’t really have anyone else who is creating unique social experiences as an online platform, and specifically an online social platform.

What’s confusing to a user of the market that wants to see the head to head horserace, zero sum game, Microsoft/Netscape situation, it’s not actually happening. It’s really actually a race for each one of these companies and services to get as much traction and deliver as much value to an individual with the thing that they do better than anybody else.

The full transcript is below.

Interview with Ning CEO Gina Bianchini

Michael Arrington: I’m here with Ning CEO Gina Bianchini, hello Gina.

Gina Bianchini: Hi, how are you?

MA: Good. Thanks for joining the World Economic Forum in Davos to sit down and talk about Ning for a little bit. How do you like the hotel?

GB: I describe it as Swedish dorm room chic, and it’s pretty great actually.

MA: Even though there’s no internet access in all the internet executives’ rooms?

GB: It’s a little ironic.

MA: So everyone’s down here in the lobby working.

GB: I almost feel like that’s our purpose here in a way.

MA: It’s good for me because if I want to talk to you, I just go to the lobby and you’re on your computer and you can’t really hide when you only have internet access in one place.

GB: Absolutely.

MA: Is this your first World Economic forum?

GB: It is.

MA: And what do you think of the conference itself?

GB: It’s pretty amazing. It’s a little overwhelming actually because there are so many people from different walks of life doing so many interesting things, and it’s all packed within a small Swiss ski town, that’s it’s kind of hard to get your bearings. But it’s been wonderful. I really enjoyed our panel the first day.

MA: Yeah, you were on a panel with Evan Williams, Randi Zuckerberg, Owen VanNatta, and Reid Hoffman was there. I was there reporting on it; you guys talked about social networks. Do you feel like there’s a good amount of attention here to technology? It seems like there is.

GB: There absolutely is. It’s rare that you go to conferences that have a broad policy and political base, as well as being something that’s just technology focused, and I’ve had more people come up to me, trying to explore how to use social technologies to change the world, and I think that that is always a great conversation to have.

MA: Do you find that most people here are very familiar with Ning? New for some people? Is Ning part of the established set of technology companies that people here know about?

GB: I don’t think so. I think the thing that has actually been really surprising to me is how many people touch a Ning network from all walks of life. I had someone from a pretty large advertising agency say to me that their team in Brazil has been using Ning for basically three years.

MA: The advertising agency has a Ning presence.

GB: And even better, they’re using it for their internal team to coordinate. So I think the thing that’s been the most fun from my perspective is that we made the decision early on that we would share branding, that we weren’t going to be a service that was basically one size fits all, but that what we do, being a social platform for interests and passions, and really being about unique social experiences, that we needed to share the brand. And we needed to basically allow our network creators to put their brand first with Ning being a bit recessive. So we don’t have the same visibility that a Facebook or a Linked In or a Twitter has, but we actually think that for what we do, it’s absolutely critical that we give and we share brand identity, because what people are doing on Ning is creating unique contextual social experiences for the things that really matter to them. And so, that’s actually something that’s been fun for me, is to see all the different ways that people are using Ning today, and in some cases, they absolutely know it’s Ning, and in other cases, they don’t know it’s Ning. That’s not white label.

MA: You allow domain mapping which is very basic Ning – is there some footer that is any Ning branding at all?

GB: Yes, absolutely.

MA: We’ll talk about that in a little bit with your numbers. You’ve raised a lot of money; you’ve raised $119 million dollars now, and your last valuation was $750 million, is that right? (GB nods). And you count among your investors, Reid Hoffman, the founder of Linked In. And Marc Andreesen’s actually cofounder, but he’s also on the board of Facebook. Is it awkward at all, with Marc being on the board of Facebook and Reid being Linked In heavy? Is it at all awkward? Because they are both competitors, right?

GB: Not at all. No, and that’s actually why it’s ok. I think that this is the thing that has really been emerging in the last year, is the fact that different people – or I should say actually, the same people, are using different social technologies for different purposes. And I think at some level, the true story of the last few years has been that everybody’s been trying to figure out where they fit into the world and whether or not different people are competing directly. I thinks it’s an interesting evolution that I did not expect, and I don’t think any of us expected when we started, because there’s always the sense that it is a horse race, it’s not a zero sum game as it relates to social technologies, and in fact what’s happening, is that the same people are using Linked In for their professional identity; they’re using Facebook for connecting to people that they know in the real world, and have gone to school with, that are friends from the neighborhood. What Twitter is about is news and real time events in a way that is different from Facebook. And what we do is basically enable people to dive deeper and create rich social experiences for the topics and things that they truly care about. The aha moment that I had was that’s what actually makes us human beings, and what makes us people, and these different social technologies all work together really well.

For example, two weeks ago we launched Twitter integration, and we’ve seen a huge increase in terms of people sharing content from their Ning network.

MA: That’s both signing in and publishing back to Twitter?

GB: It’s just publishing to Twitter, and then people coming back with a shortened url. And what’s been great about that is that people love to be able to share on Twitter. They love to be able to share and then come back in, and we’re seeing that in the numbers. And I think we’ll shortly launch a similar integration using Facebook because it just makes sense, and it’s what people want. They want to have a very fluid relationship between Linked In, Twitter, Ning and the networks they belong to. And Facebook. And I think that’s something that from the inside, we all realize. Why for example, Reid Hoffman has been a great supporter of Ning, why Marc can sit on the board of Facebook and Ning, and why Marc is an investor in so many of the social technologies that exist, and I think that’s something that’s really fun about it right now.

MA: When you integrate with Facebook, will that be in the sense of signing in to your Ning account through Facebook and publish back to Facebook? Or more like what you’re doing with Twitter, and just publish back to Facebook?

GB: More like what we’re doing with Twitter for v1, and there’s no political strategy that says we should have Facebook connect or we shouldn’t have Facebook connect, it’s just a matter of we’re seeing what’s working and integrating rapidly from here.

MA: How about just from a user perspective and integrating the social graph and having your friends listed in one place? Is that something that you think there may be demand at Ning?

GB: Absolutely. It’s something that we’ll explore in the next few months as we move forward.

MA: One place I personally think you do compete with Facebook is company pages. Companies set up a profile to get fans, and it’s not just their friends but they promote it, they put it on their advertisements. They also might do that with Ning whether it’s the Ning network or the domain mount and make it look all their own. They might do both but it seems like there’s a clear direct competition between Ning networks and Facebook pages. Agree, disagree, how do you see that?

GB: Absolutely disagree. I love the fact that there should be this perceived horserace, where one person wins and one person loses, and that’s just not how it’s working today. And what’s really cool is the fact…

MA: Do you see people doing both?

GB: Yeah, absolutely.

MA: That’s why you don’t think there’s competition?

GB: That’s why we can actually integrate with Twitter and use Twitter as a distribution channel. And basically send people very fluidly to Ning and then people are publishing from Ning into Twitter really effectively. And so what I think actually is happening , and we’re seeing this especially among people who are artists, and people who started in 2005 and 2006 with a myspace page, which is they basically look at it and they say, “ok, Facebook, myspace, Twitter, phenomenal for distribution. That is the place where I can put up a fan page and within a few hours I can have a million followers.” The same thing is true for twitter. So if you basically look at the people who have over a million followers, they are getting increasingly sophisticated in terms of understanding that those are phenomenal, but very lightweight distribution channels.

What they’re realizing and I think where the market is going is the sophistication around, where you’re sending people and where the destination is, whether that was originally a blog, or whether that was originally a website is actually becoming a rich immersive social experience.

MA: And now you’re talking about Ning?

GB: And now I’m talking about Ning.

MA: And a Facebook page isn’t as rich and immersive social experience.

GB: That’s not what they’re trying to do. They’re trying to give people away within Facebook to say, “I’m a fan of Pete Wentz and Fall Out Boy” or “I love Adidas.” I think that’s fantastic, but it’s very lightweight. It’s good that it’s lightweight because it means that people have a way to thread all of these ways that they want to interact with brands, with celebrities, with artists, with things that they truly care about. But I think where the market is going and where you’ll see more and more people do interesting things, is where is the hub, where are they sending people. And that is Ning.

For example, Soleil Moon Frye has 1.4 million Twitter followers and just launched a Ning network two days ago. And her excitement about it is that she can allow and enable the people following her on Twitter, primarily moms and young moms who have the same messy wonderful life as a mother that she does. That she gives them an opportunity to really dive deeper into what she cares about and what she’s passionate about, and really building that out as a small but very powerful lifestyle brand for moms.

MA: How many international uniques are you tracking?

GB: On a global basis, by IP address that excludes bots, we have 92 million monthly uniques. And four months ago we had 70 million global uniques.

MA: Does that include the Ning networks that are domain mapping?

GB: Yes it does.

MA: So that’s a fourth of Facebook, something like that? But you don’t have the compressed footprint that Facebook has, or even Twitter, which is smaller than you. Why is that?

GB: Very simple reason: one size fits all social platforms are easier to get your head around because they have the overarching brand identity. When you’re on Facebook, you are on Facebook, and it is blue and white. And when you’re on Twitter, you are on Twitter. In our case, we took a different approach and we have a different strategy, which is for us to enable unique, immersive, very rich different social experiences around the things that people care about and really allow them to dive deeper, as I mentioned as that hub.

MA: So the things people care about get the press attention as opposed to Ning sometimes.

GB: Absolutely. For example, Linkin Park just launched their official website which is now a social experience on Ning. And that was 3 or 4 days ago. Because they realized that what their fans want is this social opportunity to say, “I love you on myspace, I love you on Twitter, I want to know what’s going on and what I should be paying attention to. But then I want a way to dive deeper into the Linkin Park experience.”

MA: (drawing diagram off camera) What you’re saying is that Ning is sort of the center. And you’ve got Facebook and Twitter and myspace. So that’s a good way of thinking about it. Do you think that Facebook, Twitter and myspace think about it that way?

GB: I don’t think they see us as a competitor. Here’s what I think is happening in the market. And this is not rainbows and sunshine saying this – what’s really interesting is that all of these companies were basically founded in 2005, 2006, 2007, and what’s actually happened is that each one of them has gotten really comfortable and more narrowly focused on the thing they do better than anybody else. Facebook with Facebook light is actually going more in the direction of connecting you with the people you have strong relationships with your real identity, with status messages, and with photo sharing. And they do that better than anybody else.

Twitter – and they had that year where, is Twitter a competitor or are they not – you can see in the past 6 months is that while there’s some overlap, it’s not a horserace, they’re not actually competing head to head where Facebook wins and Twitter loses. So Twitter’s about news and real time events.

You’ve seen the same thing with Linked In, where they’ve gotten really strong and have tremendous momentum by basically saying, “we own professional identity.” Professional identity has different characteristics than what you want to do with your friends on Facebook and that’s actually great. And then for us, interests and passions. If you look across the market, the thing that’s interesting is that none of these companies actually have a number two. And what gets confusing about it is, Facebook doesn’t have a number two. Twitter doesn’t have a number two. Linked In – you lived through that – all of the competitors are gone, and they are the dominant player. And in our case, we don’t really have anyone else who is creating unique social experiences as an online platform, and specifically an online social platform.

What’s confusing to a user of the market that wants to see the head to head horserace, zero sum game, Microsoft/Netscape situation, it’s not actually happening. It’s really actually a race for each one of these companies and services to get as much traction and deliver as much value to an individual with the thing that they do better than anybody else.

MA: Ok. Are you happy with your revenue model and how that’s going?

GB: Absolutely.

MA: How happy, like 9 out of 10?

GB: (laughs) We don’t talk about revenue. I’m happy to talk about the revenue streams that we have.

MA: It’s ads, it’s upsells right?

GB: It’s ads, it’s upsells, and premium features like virtual gifts which we launched in October that allow our network creators to make money from their networks. So when a member of the Lost Zombies Ning network which is 10,000 people who dress up as zombies and take pictures and videos and connect with each other in building this collaborative documentary . It’s lost zomies.com, check it out, it’s awesome. And what they’re doing with virtual gifts, is their members are giving them bloody chain saws, and when that transaction happens, we split the revenue 50/50 with the network creators. We think there are tremendous opportunities there.

MA: How many bloody chainsaws have been given?

GB: I don’t actually know specifically.

MA: Are the member of the group?

GB: I’m a member of Lost Zombies, I am.

MA: You should be like Tom from myspace, a member of every network.

GB: That’s a good idea, I like that.

MA: With a really ridiculous pose in some picture. So what is revenue? Are you profitable yet? Are you approaching profitability yet? Are you approaching the point where you could be profitable? Do you want to slow down growth?

GB: We’re really happy and so are our investors. It’s the benefit of being a private company, but it doesn’t make your job any easier.

MA: How many employees do you have?

GB: We have 166 employees.

MA: And you said you’re not going to talk about profitability.

GB: We’re not going to talk about revenue, profitability.

MA: Facebook does, they’re private.

GB: I know.

MA: Twitter doesn’t. Myspace doesn’t. Hint? Million a month? 10 million a month?

GB: We’re really happy with where we’re at and where we’re going.

MA: When you approach profitability will you announce that?

GB: Stay tuned.

MA: That’s at least something. I can drop that now. It think that’s it. How many registered users?

GB: We have 41 million registered users and we’re adding about a million registered users ever 12-13 days.

MA: And you’re not spending anything on marketing or you are? I’ve never seen anything.

GB: No, it’s primarily email. As we launched Twitter, and soon we’ll launch Facebook, those are actually great sources of new members coming in to and across the Ning networks. The good news/bad news of our model is that it’s incredibly productive and effective in terms of growth and exponential growth, but certainly we’ve made a different decision than other services in terms of really sharing that brand placement. And then allowing people to create really incredibly rich unique social experiences on Ning.

MA: Who goes public first? Zynga, Facebook, or Linked In? Personal opinion.

GB: I am not great at predicting timing but I think all of them are incredibly good businesses that are real. And the reality is that two or three years ago Zynga wasn’t in existence, but everybody was wondering, how are social technologies going to make money. I think the story of 2009 was that one size fits all…

MA: Bloody chainsaws, is how they’re going to make money.

GB…social platforms went mainstream. And I think the story of 2010, 2011, 2012 is social platforms become real businesses.

MA: You going to be going public you think? Is that your aim? Or have Andreeson get Facebook to buy you, some large competitor?

GB: We are very confident that we can be a large independent company.

MA: Thanks very much, enjoy the rest of the conference. I really appreciate it.

GB: Thank you so much.

Key Video From The World Economic Forum's Social Networking Powerhouse Panel

Michael Arrington — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 08:58:28 +0000

Each year the World Economic Forum at Davos holds number of technology focused sessions. Last year I moderated a high profile discussion about the next digital experience. This year, Loic Le Meur is hosting a discussion on the growth of social networks.

Participants include Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn, Greylock), Owen Van Natta (MySpace), Gina Bianchini (Ning), Evan Williams (Twitter) and George Colony (Forrester Research) and Don Tapscott (nGenera). Randi Zuckerberg, Jeff Jarvis, Russian super-investor Yuri Milner and others also dropped by to participate.

The room is packed, standing room only, and bursting at the seams. These guys are popular in Silicon Valley. Bring them to Davos, Switzerland and everyone wants to hear what they have to say.

Each panelist is giving a short 3-4 minute talk on how they frame the interesting issues around social networking (Hoffman says, for example, that privacy is only an issue for old people, young people don’t care.). We have videos of most of these comments and will embed them below as we process them..

Seven of the 15 most traffic sites in the world are social sites, Colony says in his intro. Only 17% of online users will visit a social site each day, though, including mobile usage. This varies widely by age – 27% of those 25 and under will visit a social site each day.

Below are clips from Hoffman, Van Natta, Bianchini, Williams and Zuckerberg: