I'm posting this for three reasons:
1. I'm a ning network creator and am pissed.
2. A lot of people (members of ning networks who have no idea who ning even is) are about to have their privacy exposed by this company and they could care less as long as they grow.
3. My members are going to be spammed and it's out of my hand. Ning no longer gives it's network creators access to code or a way to move our content. The only thing we have access to is our members email addresses. I've spent blood, sweat, and tears building a great network and the company I pay monthly is about to ruin it.
Ning Exposed - Tech Company Scams its Clients
Clients of Ning are outraged over a decision that Ning made public last week. The software maker sent out an email to all of its clients, those who have created a social network on Ning, stating that they would email all members of all websites who use the Ning software to promote the newly designed Ning.com.
“Please do not send the email to my members. I pay you not to advertise on my site and I don’t think you should target my members directly,” says one Ning network creator and paying customer. Ning charges network creators to keep all Ning promotional links off their site. Some members have been paying this fee for a couple of years and so are even more upset at the direct email marketing campaign. Why pay the fee?
To make matter worse, the new Ning.com combines all member data from all websites created using the Ning system. The owners of the websites have no option to opt out or remove their members. There’s going to be a lot of explaining to do when members see their own picture, profile, and information on Ning.com, when they never joined and probably never heard of Ning.
...snip
December 2008: Ning reverses its policy against meddling in the content of individual networks. The change is a complete about-face. Ning announced that it will no longer allow websites which are “Adult” in nature. Thousands of websites, who believed that their content was fully compliant and secure received notices from Ning. They were given a few weeks to transfer their sites out of the Ning platform. Small problem- They didn’t have access to any of their files and couldn’t move. Ning, realizing the dilemma they created, made an exception and allowed those network creators access to their websites files.
This is quite a change from a company who’s co-founder Marc Andreessen was quoted only a few months earlier saying:
“To prevent porn, you have to take an activist stand against freedom of expression — you have to get in there and judge content, judge people, judge intent, and take action based on your judgments. I would never criticize a company for doing so, but I don’t want to do that, and we as a company don’t want to do that.”
Oh, by the way, they didn’t remove ALL adult content from Ning, only the content they didn’t like. If your name is 50 Cent and you own the largest social network on Ning, you can have all the porn you want. I guess you can’t really blame them. How do you argue with 50 cent?
Spam-Spam-Spam: If you are a member of a Ning site, you will know about it quickly. Ning networks are bombarded by spam invites to join other networks on Ning. Your inbox will be flooded by emails that say “Come Join Me on XYZ Network.”
There is a hole in the system, which is convenient for Ning, which allows people to gather friends across any website using Ning’s technology and then invite them all to join their website. The invites are sent directly to email address, even though you never gave out your email address.
Imagine if all of your friends on MySpace have their own MySpace sites and each constantly invite you to join them? The invites are sent to your email inbox, and because of the way Ning is set up, its hard to tell which friend on which site actually sent it to you!
...snip
PS- If you’re wondering why we’re writing about a private company, it’s because no one else will. We received comments and notes about this subject. One person mentioned that they tried repeatedly to submit this story to the major tech blogs, but they wouldn’t respond or write about it, so we did.
Link:
http://www.chartingstocks.net/2009/03/ning-exposed-tech-company-ning-scams-its-clients/#more-1493
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