TECH CRUNCH - Apr 15 - Ning is killing off its free product, forcing existing free networks to either make the change to premium accounts or migrate their networks elsewhere. Also the company has cut ~70 people — over 40% of its staff. 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).

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It was honestly just a matter of time. Ning is a great platform but is under tremendous competition from other "do it yourself" type portals. It's too bad though because it's such a great platform.

I agree 100%. Gone are the old crazy valuations of SN companies (Reference: Tech Crunch April 18, 2008 - "Ning worth USD $500 million")

Their platform at $50 a month ($600 per year) is high in the current market for savvy shoppers. So they will lose the market share from this group. They are counting more on their brand being so strong people will flock to them.

Although a different market, Vonage had spent and spent marketing themselves as the low cost VOIP provider. As a result, their Financials clearly show a company doing close to a Billion in Revenue. This is indicative of millions of customers. If they lose a few that are cost savvy (Vonage has seriously raised its rates this year and removed low cost services) then the loss is made up by the customers that don't care or know better.

Ning is nowhere's near this type of position.

The only benefit they have as a SAAS platform is that as opposed to a 'do it yourself' SN service, they are providing the updates. It takes hours to really initiate the service right, but they would take care of any bugs, updates and security....For many non-technical people, $50 a month may be worth it.

Marc Lesnick
Conference Organizer
Social Networking Conference