Alternatives to Ning

As you're probably aware, Ning is closing its doors to its free service, and people will have to either migrate their groups elsewhere or start paying. Before looking at that, let's get the important stuff out of the way - what are the alternatives? I've found a few that you might want to consider taking a look at. I should say that I don't use these myself, so they're not personal recommendations.

http://www.socialgo.com/ Basic is free, advertising driven. Limited functionality, but appears to have no less than Ning.

http://www.igloosoftware.com/free Limited to 25 named users. Free, commercial version available

http://www.zimbio.com Basic, but seems to do the trick

http://www.grouply.com/ Offering themselves as a Ning alternative. Options to migrate users across

http://bricabox.com/ Not tried this, so limited knowledge of it

http://www.bigtent.com/ This looks easy and straightforward to create a group

http://www.spruz.com/ Also setting itself up as a Ning migration site. Good collection of features.

http://www.snappville.com/ This looks like it's free, but I'm not sure, and not convinced by their patter, either.

http://www.crowdvine.com/home Freebie version, limited functionality

http://www.mixxt.com/ Looks like it does the job, but doesn't say much about itself

http://www.qlubb.com/qlubbs/new Looks quite nice - easy to use, colourful and vibrant. Didn't see any pricing details, so assume free

http://www.webs.com/ has a freebie version as well as paid

http://grou.ps/ This looks quite funky, but appears to be a commercial product.

I think it's a really shabby move by Ning, who have always made it clear that they have free resources. If you check out their site in the Internet Archive you'll see that they often make the statement "Ning is the only online service where you can create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds." Even going through the terms and conditions there's very little that refers to the free/commercial element of the site, and no-where does it even seem to imply that they're going to, or may possibly, revoke the free element; there's just the catchall 'we can change our minds on any and everything' clause, which everyone has.

'Free' is an interesting concept, and one that lots of social media organisations use. It's certainly one of the questions that I get asked on my courses - 'how do people make money out of these services', and the answer is always 'advertising and loss leader free limited accounts'. Ning was using advertising, but apparently that's not enough for them, hence their move now. They're entitled to do it of course, but is it sane and sensible? I'd say not, because although they may have not, to the letter of the law, lied to their users I don't think they're going to be in a position to claim any high ground - ever again. How about their users - are they going to be happy paying for a service from a company that they can't really trust? If I had a Ning Network (which I don't - I never particularly liked the offering, so was simply a member of a couple of groups) there is NO way that I'd give them money - not because the service wasn't any good, but because they're not to be trusted.

I'm reminded of the situation with Pageflakes - the home/start page company. They used to have a really nice product, which was then sold to a company that wanted to make money. I can fully understand this, and if they'd asked their users for ideas I'd certainly have been happy to have moved to a subscription based model. However, they didn't - they simply forced advertising (and some of it very dubious, certainly not appropriate for schools) on users, in a box on every page. Consequently people left in droves, Netvibes flourished (and is now in profit), and Pageflakes is now a very poor relation.

The money aspect isn't actually (surprisingly) that important in many respects - it's the approach to the user base. What people will remember about Ning in the long run is not that they went from a free to a paid model, it's that they betrayed their user base. My personal prediction is that Ning isn't going to last for much longer - I give it about a year.

Comments

[Scriptstar]

Phil,

I wrote a simillar article with some cool alternatives.

http://www.scriptstar.co.uk/seven-sexiest-alternatives-to-ning/

[Zack]

Crazy that all these folks are left with the option to pay or leave. I noticed there are some free options out there. Zerista is one that is a free and lets you take your group to your mobile phone.

[Jen]

Thanks very much for posting your list. Our library has been using Ning for our 5 discussion groups to have online forums, etc., so now we're scrambling to find other options (being a public library, we don't have much money). Thanks!

[Bauke]

The thing is that we do not know if Ning is actually closing the free sites. They've kept radio silence, which is incredibly dumb because now there are posts on alternatives all over the web.

I'm waiting until the official statement to look for alternatives.

[Lisa Schmucki]

An alternative to Ning is edWeb.net. We are a free professional social network for the education community. Please check our out site at www.edweb.net.

[Mitch]

I agree on the trust issue but the hassle of moving and possibility of perhaps losing members on still quite a young site puts me off. I feel trapped by Ning and very annoyed!

[Daniele Bazzano]

Hi Phil, Robin Good and I have just published an article on the best Ning alternatives on the web. It might be interesting for you and your readers:

http://www.masternewmedia.org/ning-alternatives-guide-to-the-best-social-networking-platforms-and-online-group-services/

Cheers, and many thanks for your useful list. Daniele

[Richard]

There is another alternative launched yesterday in beta at http://www.zonkk.com. Zonkk is free to join and has loads of applications and options. There are also paid subscriptions available for site upgrades.