The Place Where Ludington Talks
What's Happe-NING?
Ning has broadcast to all NING sites that they are no longer going to offer the NING platform for free. Here's their introductory paragraph:
Announcement
In July, we will roll-out three new pricing plans and begin phasing out our free service. Many of you chose the Ning Platform to build your communities because it’s the easiest to use, has the most reliable performance and easily scales to hundreds of thousands of members. Our shift to a paid service model will enable us to focus to a greater degree on enhancing the features, performance and services we offer to our paying Network Creators. You’ll immediately see greater control over your network branding, design and member experience. All three plans offer an incredible value relative to our current premium services offerings.
We at the Torch love free things, whether it be free people, free will, free speech, or a free forum to exchange our ideas and images. The plans for sites who wish to continue existing after July, come in monthly fees of $3, $20, or $50. We would lose some of our favorite features if we choose the $3 pack, and gain some more features if we 'upgrade' to a $20 pack.
About Ning - Pricing Plans.mht
We have a couple of months to make a decision on what to do. We could choose one of the plans, find a NING alternative which can save our content and features cheaper, or consider shutting down. If we 'purchase' the $20 plan, we could even consider to "consolidate" with other existing NING sites like Dave's, Sheila's, Coco's, etc. Any thoughts on what would be best to do?
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Dave on
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At this point i'm not sure what the best option is... i'd say that a little investigation into the available options is in order. On the one hand it would be nice to just stick with what we got because we are familiar with it. On the other hand, keeping it is going to be a little costly (not that we can't afford it of course), but it's just the thought of having to pay for something that you can get free in several places. I just opted to not continue being a part of a forum that had gone to being a pay site a few years ago for the simple fact that a majority of the people that I would ever talk to there I could talk to elsewhere like on Facebook for free.
As far as going to a different site for hosting the forum, here's a good place to start:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=8Eo&...
The first listing sounds pretty decent and reliable as far as I could tell from glancing over a few different pages. It will give us something to ponder on anyway.
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Permalink Reply by masonco on
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Just let me know. Rumors have it that Facebook will be charging after July too, so I don't know. I would have thought the advertisments would pay for the sites.
Is that per month?
The rumor with facebook is it will be a monthly fee. Haven't heard officially yet.
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As far as Facebook goes, I doubt those are anything more then rumors. Similar rumors have gone around about Myspace and Yahoo Messenger through the several years I have used both. I can recall numerous occasions when Tom, the guy who started Myspace would tell people that there was absolutely no truth to the rumor that Myspace was going to be a pay site... usually within a week though you'd see messages saying that Tom was tracking this or that or that Myspace was going to a pay site. So unless you see something on the news about Facebook going to being a pay site, I wouldn't worry about it.
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That's why I said I had not heard anything officially yet. I am sure they would have contacted members by now if it were to go into effect in July.
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Permalink Reply by Willy on
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XLFD
If you pay to use Ning can you then solicit advertisers for this forum? That may be the way to go. Maybe the LDN will buy advertising on this site.
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Google already has ads on this site so who gets the benefit from them? Ning?
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Permalink Reply by XLFD on
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That's the reason they have been able to offer free sites in the past. It would be nice to know why they are changing the status quo, besides the bottom line of profits. A lot of good, smaller sites will probably die in July.
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There are a few other forum sites I go to that are associated with Ning, one of them should probably be fine being they have a pretty good sized membership but a few of the smaller ones are going to have to figure out what they want to do in the coming weeks.
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Permalink Reply by Mary A. on
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Are the fees PM/PM (per member per month)? Would they charge members directly? Lots to think about here. I hate to lose this circle of friends, even though I don't really know any of you personally. And I would surely miss the ability to contact any one of you if I needed or wanted to. :-(
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Members of the site would not have to pay, nor would they be charged directly. The bill would come directly to me. I'm leaning right now towards the $20/mo. or $200/yr. option, and might see whether we can get some advertising revenue to offset some of this. Maybe we can advertise a local privately -owned marina or a truly supreme automobile and marine business.
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Permalink Reply by Sweater Cows! on
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Do we have 12 members willing to kick in $20.00?(or 199/12=?) That would cover the middle catagory which is what I would say to go with.
I was going to get a redirected domain on coffeeshop bikers but I haven't yet nor have I tried to promote it, (Maybe thats why it is a boring thus far). Haven't decided to keep it or go to some other host.
Anyhow, I would go with the middle catagory. Esp. since we lose groups and video uploads)with the super cheap one.
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