Ning cuts free accounts and 40 percent of staff
White label social network provider Ning has made some drastic changes to its overall business model and staffing just 30 days after a new CEO was installed.
Ning CEO Gina Bianchini stepped down a month ago and was replaced by COO Jason Rosenthal. While the first month was a time of normalcy, behind the scenes some major preparations were being made for a complete company shake up.
An announcement was made via the company blog that the staff was being cut from 167 people to 98, or a reduction of 40 percent. While big news, the aspect that will impact the users is the news that the company is bringing its free product offering to an end.
Our Premium Ning Networks like Friends or Enemies, Linkin Park, Shred or Die, Pickens Plan, and tens of thousands of others both drive 75 percent of our monthly U.S. 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 percent 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.
What exactly the options are going to be for the current users of the free service are unknown at this time, but should be announced within the next two weeks. How much of an upgrade will be required is not known, but Ning does offer numerous premium upgrades of varying prices. You might get away with the cheapest, or you might not, it’s just not known at this time.
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