Ning Planning to Remain Free for Teachers
Ning, a company that allows users to build their own social networks, says it has signed a letter of intent with a major educational publisher to keep its service free for educators, several weeks after causing an outcry among nonprofit groups …
Context & Ripple Effects
Ning built its business around letting users create social networks, reaching 100,000 networks in 2007. Its April 2010 reversal on free networks, accompanied by staff cuts, put that model under pressure and triggered nonprofit backlash.
The proposed education-publisher arrangement carves out a partner-supported exception to that broader shift, preserving educator access while Ning moves other network operators away from free service.
First-order effects
- Educators are slated to retain free access to Ning through the proposed publisher relationship, rather than being folded into the wider move away from free networks.
- Ning gains a route to serve an education segment without relying on the same direct payment model imposed after its free-network reversal and workforce cuts.
Second-order effects
- Nonprofit network operators face a clearer divide from educators: the former's objections do not produce the same named institutional backer or proposed free-access arrangement.
- The educational publisher becomes Ning's channel for sustaining a user segment, making partner-backed access an alternative to charging every network operator directly.
Third-order effects
- If Ning repeats this structure across other user groups, hosted social-network services may segment into paid tiers for general users and subsidized access for communities backed by institutions.
- The episode points to a less uniform freemium model in which distribution partners, rather than free access alone, determine which communities a platform preserves.
The trend: Ning is moving from broadly free, self-service network creation toward segmented access funded by paying users or institutional partners.