When Ning said it will let you create a social network for anything is was in some sort of a hurry. The platform has now decided to stop users from creating a few networks and axing adult networks from its platform. Ning’s CEO Gina Bianchini cited the flooding of such networks to be burdening other networks as their ad networks don’t appreciate their existence:
Adult social networks don’t pull their own weight. Specifically, they require other social networks to work harder because they don’t generate enough advertising or premium service revenue to cover their costs. Plus, our ad partners aren’t big fans of the adult networks and therefore require us to identify adult networks or risk our healthy advertising revenue. We don’t want to be in the policing business and, unchecked, that’s where this is heading
[image with thanks]
Here is what I posted as a blog comment on NIng, unsure whether they will publish it or not:
Although I understand Ning’s dismay at the [heavy] volume of administrative work the maintenance of adult networks requires, your approach seems lame from a business point of view.
According to partner-investor Mark Andreesen’s blog justification of adult networks on Ning last January – http://blog.pmarca.com/2008/01/porn-ning-and-t.html – Ning was going to balance those needs with others. Indeed, i was happy to see Ning grow to become such a feature-rich, content-creation-enabling environment not only for adult networks but for all communities.
Now, however, that position is not being furthered and is being quickly reversed because “it no longer makes sense.”
Gina and Mark: you are failing to use market/economic principles to resolve your cited problems with adult networks. Let’s review your arguments….
“Adult social networks don’t pull their own weight.” So price those costs accordingly.
“By having legal adult social networks on Ning, we’ve seen a rise in volume of illegal adult social networks.” Filter all new adult networks – put all adult networks on watch for 90 days, with explicit guidelines for responsible operation.
“Adult social networks on Ning receive a disproportionate number of DMCA take down notices creating additional work for our team.” Push this “cost” of doing business onto the network owner, who becomes responsible for policing his/her community: screening/approving videos, verifying copyright authorization, etc.
These are just initial proposals; many viable, profitable alternatives exist. The point I want to emphasize is that there are additional steps that Ning can take to moderate its adult communities while enabling freedom and business opportunities that Ning purports to empower. The evidence contradicts Ning’s own founders aspirations – and that seems to communicate Ning’s own MO as SOB.
In our particular case, I was planning to build out an adult network which would provide our non-profit organization a viable platform to reach gay & bisexual men, and then extend the Ning platform with web interventions: online counseling, professionally-moderated chats, peer discussions, and live medical advice. Because adult/porn content offers a viable way to attract & retain this audience, now our ambition to educate as well as entertain has been seriously impeded – we’re back to square one: how to affordably achieve our plans.
Practical decision is hardly what you’ve made; it’s always a philosophical one. The problem is that your philosophy has shifted, and is a sad precedent that you couldn’t innovate and create a win-win solution. Instead, you’ve demonstrated that any future, sudden and capricious change Ning may decide to make won’t be in the network creator’s best interest.
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This is what Ning writes in their TOS
“Subject to this Agreement, as a Network Creator, you control your Social Network and own all of Your Code and Your Content.”
via Ning: About: Terms of Service
The problem is that Ning has changed their APIs. There is no way to get “your content” out of the Ning system anymore. External developers who had solutions to do that have been removed from Ning. Right now network creators only can export member data via an CVS export. Content like videos and photos are stuck in the system for the time being.
Ning is suggesting in this blog post
“As part of this transition, we are exploring ways for adult networks that will no longer be available on Ning to export their content in addition to their members, which is readily available today from the Manage Members page. As we make progress on the specifics, we’ll communicate them in the Ning Help Center.”
Hopefully this problem will be solved bevore January 1st 2009. Otherwise adult network creators have “owned” content but never got a chance to “get” it.
fom – fit older men
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Hi John. I am curious if you have found a solution for your challenge with the gay/bisexual network you wanted to build on NING. We were planning the same catering for the Caribbean Region
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I did find a solution of sorts, but it’s still pending: socialgo.com is in beta and yet I am still waiting to review their pay/premium membership options & fees before proceeding on this particular project. Plan B is to intergrate JomSocial into the Joomla CMS platform, but this extension does not have a way to collect fees for membership – yet. I’ve postponed the website launch until mid-March, but I am still organizing content, multimedia, educational games and lot of great resources for this project. Thanks for your interest.
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Hi John – VERY intersting. Thanks for the link to JomSocial. Here is something for you (if you don’t know about it already). http://sitesuites.ning.com/group/joomlafans
Sitesuites are building a JoomlaBridge. This means – you could build your own social network on Joomla and yet connect it via the bridge with an existing one on Ning. THATS a very exciting option I think. They just start a beta program.
Thanks
fom
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one more thing. I am considering SocialGo too but
a) their pricing is not clear (they are still in Beta – yes!) – I don’t want to pay an excessive monthly “hosting” fee to SocialGO just to have a “free” social network running – especially because…
b) their monetizing options are based on PayPal and PayPal does DEFINITELY NOT allow payments for adult content of any sort. This puts them back to the drawing board.
fom
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@FOM
Hi George,
1) The pricing has been fully published in detail on the SocialGO homepage here: http://owners.socialgo.com/magazine/read/zocku-launched-to-exclusively-serve-mature-content-networks_109.html
The price is $49.99 for a pretty much “all you can eat” adult-specific network solution, that includes access to a full API, 3rd party widget store, and subscription/payments services that are not simply using PayPal.
2) As we’ve demonstrated to you already via http://CrankStation.com (with our recent CherryPicker product), PayPal DEFINITELY IS an option for allowing payments if you detach it from the content on a network by way of an intermediary token system.
Having said that, your comment b) above is premature given the fact that you have no idea what system that SocialGO is going to use for subscriptions on Zocku. We can suggest to you that it will likely be (or be similar to) CCBill for the monthly network costs, and something like WL’s token system for monetization between members.
You would do well to take a moment to read the extensive publication materials at SocialGo regarding their recent price announcement before you make any further conclusions.
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Ok – I just learned that SocialGO HAS released their pricing plan for adult networks. Here is a summary…
http://fosat.tumblr.com/post/75320268/and-the-move-goes-on-from-ning-to-socialgo-to
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Thanks. More social-networking support for Joomla is great. I’m aware of the PayPal limitation, yet what remains to be seen is if the inovice/charge is for something technical such as hosting and/or streaming, or for content – that’s the fine line, and that is what will be critical for SocialGo. I [fortunately] have other projects to manage and am waiting for the dust to settle before taking on the milk.com.mx website; as you know, it is very time-consuming to shift content or move web hosts or adjust costs/fees. Feel free to write me directly: john[at]mangodigital.com or john[at]milk.org.mx – good luck to you, too!
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Anybody interested in that Zocku billing situation should follow this thread as well…
http://owners.zocku.com/magazine/read/zocku-launched-to-exclusively-serve-mature-content-networks_2.html
fom
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I’m delighted to see the adult sites KTFO. If one wants to make a smut site use “wackwall.” They are similar to Ning,but they allow adult sites,very adult.
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Yes, and I am sure many would already be going to Ning alternates to do the same
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Hi folks. It is true that since the Joomla! database is not located on Ning, and the Joomla! Expander integrates Ning networks with Joomla! components by means of intelligent iframing, that the content passing thru the Expander is no longer under Nings jurisdiction.
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Thanks Ryan for the information
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