Community service site, Ning.com, announced today that they are removing the free option for their services and requiring all free sites to move up to their premium plan or move off the service.
“So, we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity. We will phase out our free service. Existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning.”
As it is, I will be closing the 2 Ning.com sites I run as they are for free groups without a means to support the premium payments. There are several alternatives including using existing Facebook Fan Pages.
Not surprised, I expect a lot of these “free” sites will have to start charging to pay their bills.
Daniel H.
They were getting some revenue, as all the ads on free sites were Ning ads, not ads from the community organizers. That was part of the free services.