What If Your Blogging Platform Dies?
In case you hadn’t heard, Ning died. They didn’t die totally, you can still pay for their service, but their free product is being discontinued to the disappointment of thousands of users. Here’s what Valerie Maltoni said about it:
When I read the news about the Ning community platform cutting not just staff, but also its free service, I had the same reaction Shel Holtz had — this is a betrayal of the company core promise and shatters customer trust.
via Conversation Agent
If you were utilizing Ning as a blogging or social network platform, Mashable offers a great list of alternatives to consider. In the list, you’ll see a couple of self-hosted solutions, which brings me to my point.
Though not too many well-known blogs ran on Ning, some online publishers and well-connected communities did come to depend upon it. Its shutdown raises the question of what happens when your platform dies? If you blog on a hosted service, like Blogger, Wordpress, etc. then your continuing work of blogging is dependent upon a company’s decisions, which are often motivated by the bottom line (and they have to be at times).
Even if your platform doesn’t die, it will most certainly change shape over time and you have to decide in advance that you’re okay going with the flow. In most cases, it’s far better to own your platform as much as possible by hosting your own site software on your own server and backing up often.
We can talk about how content is so important, but we can’t neglect the vitality of a great system for publishing that content either. If your platform died, went belly-up, or changed in ways to which you could not adapt, what would be your escape plan? How would you continue to build a brand in spite of losing the underlying support system? The sooner you address these questions, the better protected your content and reputation will be in the long run.
What do you think about Ning’s sudden and ill-prepared announcement? How could they have handled the situation differently? And what should bloggers learn from it all?
In addition to serving as Editor of Fuel Your Blogging, Brandon is also a Pastor at Saddleback Church and Online Community Coordinator for Pastors.com. He’s also a web designer, blogger, and church communications consultant. Catch him on his own blog or on Twitter.
Well-known blogs don’t run on free hosted services for a reason. It’s okay to use these systems as long as they have an export option.
Right on! Totally agree. For the hobby blogger, free platforms might be an option though, such as Aunt Suzie who just wants to blog about her flower garden, etc.
The reason why the freemium model works well is because it opens the door to other possibilities the trusting user might find useful; slamming the door on users will encourage them to go elsewhere … and there will always be an elsewhere providing the service free.
Yep. I think Ning will continue to serve most of its current customers, but recruiting new ones will be a trick from here on out.
That might be their decision though if you think about it. Keeping the loyal customers (like triiibes.com) can be more beneficial than letting 1,000+ people use their servers for free, causing them to lose money over time. So, keeping the paying customers and weeding out the people who are just using it as a hobby site seems like a good idea since it’ll cut server costs down considerably (from what I’m guesstimating anyways).
NIng did several things badly.
First of all, they didn’t communicate directly with network creators. Many found out about the shut-down from other sources (like TechCrunch).
Two, when a company email was posted, it was all about Ning’s needs, nothing about the people using it.
Three, there’s no clear plan going forward. People are tearing their hair out wondering what will happen to their networks on May 4. Ning should have outlined the changes upfront – telling people what it will cost, whether (and how) to export their networks, if there’s any discount/consideration for non-profits, etc.
Four, they’ve closed several discussions (one with over 700 comments) on their forum, where people were frantically trying to sort out what was going on.
Not good.
Meanwhile, I have my blog on Wordpress. And, I export it regularly.
All good points and kudos on exporting – it’s what smart bloggers do. :)
Yeah, I run on my own server and I still export daily updates to my email address just in case. You never know, unless you’ve built your own CMS and you are the person calling all of the shots.
And if I built my own CMS, I’d be in a world of trouble!
haha yeah, same here.
Ning, destined to repeat the past, did not learn from history vis-a-vis SixApart c. 2004.
At least in 2004, there existed an easy(ish) import/export feature for users to move to a different platform (WordPress).
Lessons users can take away from this? When choosing a publishing platform – be sure to consider content portability, just in case.
Absolutely, Lisa. And if you’re Ning, communicate more clearly – ease people into the transition.
Yea, I thought the May 4 deadline was a little abrupt. Though, May 4 may not be the ‘die’ deadline for free users – - but its not as if Ning has offered up any real detail beyond that announcement. Existing Ning users are feeling rushed and pressured to find alternatives. – happily other communities like WordPress/BuddyPress and Posterous have stepped up and filled a gaping void left by Ning, themselves.
Just what exactly do you believe is the best weblog system to make use of for someone which has a quite limited experience of technology?
In my own personal opinion, Posterous is the fastest and easiest way to begin blogging. A close second would be Tumblr. The trick is remembering to export and backup often from any system. Let me clarify that I’m not convinced these are the best blogging systems available, just two of the best options for non-technical folks who just want to write.