What is it?
Ning is a web-based interface that bundles a number of separately available technologies in a single unified, hosted, people management platform.
Specifically, Ning integrates a blog, wiki, forum, photo/video gallery, “latest activity” micro feed, events calendar and member manager.
Extended functionality includes the ability to add widgets, form sub groups and organize projects.
Basic usage and functionality
The first thing that you’ll want to do as a new community owner is to modify the theme. Like WordPress, the initial theme is bare bones.
Network creators can select from roughly 30 cookie cutter themes to add a layer of basic styling to their site.
There are a few built in values you can alter to further personalize look and feel such as entering hex color codes (e.g. FF0000) and swapping masthead imagery with your own.
More advanced users have the ability to actually modify the CSS of their social network, which I appreciate 
Search friendliness
The network I evaluated had roughly 13,600 indexed pages in Google, ranked highly for seemingly uncompetitive terms and carried a page rank of 5/10, if you believe in that sort of thing.
I see no reason why a Ning network could not be ranked for competitive terms except for the ridged hierarchal/site structure and limited control over meta variable granularity.
Something interesting of note; most of the cached pages seem to be group and user profiles belonging to the members rather than targeted, landing and information specific pages. Again, because the user demographic is not typically trying to sell something or channel traffic to a conversion, the above characteristics may be acceptable.
The best of Ning
1. Ease of use
What makes Ning unique is the ease and speed that you can deploy a new “social network.” Literally 5 fields and you are up and running.
2. You are part of a greater network
In other words, you are on Ning’s grid right out the gate which means that your network has a better chance of attracting new members and interest. When you create a new network profile on Ning you are in essence building a node on a greater network and making yourself accessible through Ning’s global search function.
It will be interesting to conduct some testing on how Ning weights its listings; it doesn’t appear to be driven solely by the number of members a network contains.
3. You can choose to be a node or a stand alone
Your addition to the Ning network is listed as a sub-domain of ning.com (e.g. yournetwork.ning.com). You have the option of paying monthly for the ability to domain map your social network to your personal domain (e.g. yournetwork.com). Both options have their benefits mainly centered on intended longevity of the network and brand-ability of the network.
Later I envision Ning’s homepage to evolve into something of a wordpress.com and ebay.com hybrid that informs both users and passersby of new networks, biggest buzz networks, RSS updates and featured networks.
The worst of Ning
1. Ownership
I foresee a power user exodus as early network builders attribute peers to worth. Say for instance a community of 10,000 members generates 6,000 hits a day to a glass blowing social network. At a certain point a network creator may find that he/she is spending too much time maintaining the community and decide to sell the user base to a stakeholder in the glass blowing industry. Because ownership originates and stays with Ning, there is no technical transfer of asset, rendering it a non-saleable commodity.
Somewhere in the 11,114 word count ‘Terms of Services,’ not to be confused with the 4,143 word count ‘Privacy Policy,’ I found the ownership rights.
Ning Ownership Rights
You agree that, as between you and Ning, Ning owns all right, title and interest, including, all intellectual property rights, in and to the Ning Technology. Additionally, there are two types of data provided by or collected from Network Members – Network Member Data and Ning Member Data. If you are a Network Creator or an administrator designated by a Network Creator (“Administrator”), you agree that, as between Ning and you, Ning owns all right, title and interest, including, all intellectual property rights, in and to the Ning Member Data. You shall not acquire any right, title or interest therein, except for the limited rights expressly set forth in this Agreement. Any rights not expressly granted herein, are reserved to Ning. You agree to abide by all copyright notices, information, or restrictions contained in any part of the Ning Platform. You must not alter, delete, or conceal any copyright, trademark, patent, or other notices contained on the Ning Platform, including notices on any Ning Technology you download, transmit, display, print or reproduce from or using the Ning Platform.
This is interesting because technically you have to be a Ning member before you can join a social network built on Ning. Therefore, one may interpret the aggregation of all implied interest by affinity to a given subject as built and compiled by Ning members, technically owned by Ning. Or in ten words or less; you do not own your network once it’s built.
2. Monetization
Out of the box Ning advertises on your network, which is how they can offer you a seemingly free service. If you begin to attract enough interest on a given subject it may be beneficial to lease the rights to advertise with Google Adwords. However, keep in mind that ads are worthless without a pointed demographic and either search traffic or a large member base.
The ownership clause implies the only way to monetize a social network built with Ning is either to lease the ability to place third party ads, send qualified traffic to an offsite conversion channel, or leverage your network to rally interest in an existing business model or product, which you may also advertise on your network.
3. What’s built on Ning, stays on Ning
The fact that Ning is a hosted solution is both a blessing and a curse. On the upside it is essentially free to maintain, on the other, one may find it difficult, if not impossible, to migrate to another platform. There are no migration, API bridging, export or transition aid tools of any kind to allow a network creator to transfer users or content to more common, creator hosted, technologies such as phpBB, vBulletin, Dolphin or Drupal.
Final thoughts
Ning is geared for groups and hobbyists without the resources or intention to develop a salable asset. I can see it being used for some grassroots organizations, fan sites, clubs, band groupies, hub affiliations and assemblies with a finite interest, like followers of a TV series or trendy phenomenon like Twilight where the population emulates the expo effect (e.g. large swell or congregation of participants followed by an inevitable scattering).
Stakeholders, entrepreneurs and small businesses should invest the time in a platform with a higher return on their investment of community strategy and user engagement.
Base Cost: Ning advertises on your network
Ease of Use: 
(9/10)
Extensibility: (2/10)
Search Friendliness: (4/10)
Business Value: (2/10)
Overall score: 
(4.5/10)
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Very interesting article ! I was evaluating this days about switching from a vbulletin platform to ning for my forum /community and this article helped a lot. Nice website idea anyway.
Paolo
Hi Paolo, thanks for stopping by. Glad the review was of use. I’ll be blogging more regularly soon. Right now I’m working with an artist to add a little pizazz!
Nice review which helped to confirm my own thoughts on Ning.
I will be interested to see your reviews of some of the DIY social CMS platforms such as WordPress MU, Drupal, SWCMS, Dolphin, phpBB, vBulletin, etc.
Awesome review!
Ning will never be as big as facebook, myspace or twitter, because they charge their members.
(There are premium prices waiting, when you’ve hit the bandwith limitation).
In web 2.0, members is valuable assets.
They’re not the profit, they’ll just bring Ning to the profit.
Great review, Nicholas! Thank you, very much. Very helpful.
Fantastic!
Thanks for this!
I had built a 5,000 person network on Ning at one point and then I looked into all the issues you brought up. When I realized that there would be no long term on investment for the growing investment of time – I abandoned it. I don’t even own it anyway! Not a good deal.
Hi Dan-O thanks for stopping by!
Glad the review was useful. I’m trying to evaluate platforms business owners are speccing to build their own communities on.
My thought is an evaluation is most useful when it can save money, energy and precious time, avoiding the perils of disequilibrium and backwards engineering.
Much more to come, Stay tuned!
What are some of the better community platforms for small businesses that want to share content within their organization? Privacy and security are concerns, plus no Ning deal killers as mentioned in the blog post.
Hi Lisa-
There are a number of very powerful Wiki’s that I would recommend such as TikiWiki that can be used for a secured intranet.
If you are building projects you might want to check out some up and comers like Onehub. But stay away from Sharepoint, because it’s bloated, cumbersome, and in general, sucks.
This is one of the best review I have found on Ning. I need to create a social network community to bring some actions to my existing site http://www.handywise.com. After investigating a few options, Ning seems to take out all the trouble on setup such a site. However in terms of asset creation, and flexibility, Ning doesn’t give me anything. Over the years I learned that no techology last forever. So I do want more control over my application, just in case I need to move from one system to the next in the future.
Your article was exactly what I needed to know about Ning. I look at sites such as thisis50.com and wonder would I host on Ning if I were the content owner.
Hi Cecilia and Brent-
Thanks for stopping by, glad the Ning review helped a bit!
On network ownership… from what I can see, the Terms of Service states that YOU own all of your content, not Ning. Are you certain that you can not sell your network to someone else? Obviously, it needs to stay on the ning platform.
There can be no legal transfer of asset since you are not the legal owner of intellectual property, as long as it resides in the Ning house. You are free to move “your” content to another platform. However, as long as it exists on the Ning platform it was created by a Ning member (you) and other Ning members (your contributors).
From the agreement:
“If you are a Network Creator or an administrator designated by a Network Creator (”Administrator”), you agree that, as between Ning and you, Ning owns all right, title and interest, including, all intellectual property rights, in and to the Ning Member Data. You shall not acquire any right, title or interest therein, except for the limited rights expressly set forth in this Agreement. Any rights not expressly granted herein, are reserved to Ning.”
I have to say that Ning used to be so cool. Now they are crap from the front page. Unless you have already done your searches across Ning you are screwed. The front page for Ning does not have a search of their networks. You are stuck only being able to use the ones you have or to create one of your own. If you do not want to create one then you are stuck. Today 11/17/09 NING SUCKS.
I’m preparing to run an online class in January 2010 and I’m curious how Ning ranks in relation to Sclipo. Right now I’m trying to decide between the two.
Ning has HORRIBLE customer service. They make you pay a monthly fee to just have someone get back to you. Otherwise there is no answer. We pay for quite a few premium services (around $60/month) and we had a redirecting error which completely has locked us out of our account. Its been over two weeks since then and we can’t get anyone to get back to us. I would NOT reccomend using them.
Hi there – I’ve started a ning network for my work group. It is “private”, by invite only, and the conversation is picking up. I only have 24 members at this point and am doing this as a bit of pilot project to try and demonstrate the usefulness of social networking for knowledge sharing across the company and all that jazz.
Now, I’m VERY concerned – does Ning own the IP of member content? So, let’s say our discussion leads to us developing a process of some kind (we are professional services firm), does Ning now own that? Are they reading our site?
I didn’t have our legal team look at this – this was sort of renegade move on my part. What kind of trouble could I be getting my company into????
I’d appreciate any insights and suggestions people can share…
Thanks.
Shan
Hi Shan-
Thanks for stopping by!
If you mean using Ning for lead gen, I think you are fine.
Of course they have access to, and can read, anything you post to their system. It may be secure from the general public but sensitive information such as legal documents/agreements, financial records or anything “classified” is better secured on a roll your own wiki or Microsoft Sharepoint (I hate Sharepoint) and hosted internally.
If you’re looking for a method of content sharing/organization for your small business there are a lot of lucrative “up and comers” you might want to try, like Backpack It (http://backpackit.com/).
Thanks for the useful insights.
What would you recommend for an online community tool, outside of those mentioned above, for a secure group of business owners that are alumni of a leadership academy and need an online space to communicate and share/store content. We would not want to loose ownership of our IP stored in the online tool. The tool should have the ability to store member profiles, photos, video, content, and keep track of individual threads of communication under searchable categories. Have you heard of http://www.unifyer.com/?
Many thanks.
If you create a network on Ning, you do not 100% own it. What you can do to your network is very limited. For those who have their own server, I would recommend Jcow social script(http://jcow.net), which you can download for free.
This article explained some of my most pertinent questions about ning and what kind of success I would have with it. I am seriously considering other options. But first, I am going to spend some time here on your blog to get some guidance on how to build and integrate the kind of community I was for my organization online.
Thank you so much for keeping us informed.
Sincerely,
Carmellita
hey people look at this ning is a waste of your time & investment look at the new rules thay put on about phaseing out free sites if you built a site and looking forward to grow your site not possible with ning anymore ning has no more free sites. you can,t market your site or advertise on ning. ning has no contact information but a blog pure nonsense people forget about ning take this advise seriously.
hi,
Can U recommend good Social Network for web-site?
are there some good free social networks solutions?
thank U for the help!!!
what do you guys think of dolphin as a replacement for ning?
or do you have any other community software/solutions that you would reccommend?
preferably free
i am a web designer and developer so i don’t mind getting my hands dirty in the tech side of making it work how i want it to.
thanks
Ning. Hate it so much. I have a network on ning. I paid regularly. but then they have new plan&pricing. I refuse to accept that. then they shut own my network. which is ok. fine. My network is no longer active. but they still charging me for the old plan price.!! what the hell. Already send message to their admin. but no response. I have to go to the Bank to cut off the payments of may auto-Credit card Payment.
I suggest DONT make any network on Ning platform. they have poor plan of revenue model that keep changing from time to time. This will affect the community you have been building and nurturing.
thank you! We often just sign up for anything paying no attention to that box checked, attaching you to a contract you will never read.
Good info!
Hey Nick,
All of the answers that I had questions to were answered. Great review, well written.
As an internet entrepreneur I was looking at A) monetizing B) ownership and exit strategies – well before we started anything.
I did notice that this review was well over a year ago and I was doing a bit more research on their updated policies. I found this blog that they put up (just about a year to the date after this review) that seems to squash the biggest qualm of “who owns the data rights”.
I’m curious if you can comment on this. In your opinion do you think that this change in TOS secures our rights to sell and own the data that is driven from the network? http://blog.ning.com/2010/07/changes-to-ning-terms-of-service-its-your-network-your-data.html
I have also seen that they now offer a CSV Export Tool for users data.
I am also curious about customization. We own several other sites (in e-Commerce) and do a lot of testing on design to increase conversion rates. A/B MultiVariant testing to really capitlize on our users behaviors. My biggest worry is that we dont have enough control over the design to test different ad placements/sizes/etc. Any comment on this with their newest version of Ning?
Would LOVE to hear your feedback. We are actively searching for a solution…Ning seems to be a gorgeous platform and very user friendly….but we can’t do it if we can’t sell it..
-Andrew-
Nicholas: Thank you for the most well written and “to the point” advice I have read in a long time. Great review by a person who knows their stuff.
Ning has to be the worst pay-for platform on the planet.
Obtuse and non responsive.
A joke.
The lock-in to Ning is also a lock-in to their development, testing and service organizations, which haven’t always shown a deep understanding of their customers’ needs or business. Their recent disastrous rollout of a new text editor is a case in point: it was barely of alpha quality, yet it was forced on thousands of Ning networks. No amount of customer complaining could motivate Ning to roll it back out and clean up their mess offline. Instead, thousands of administrators had to deal with complaints from tens or hundreds of thousands of users, and spend countless hours hand-correcting erroneous code. The lack of sophistication with which Ning responded to and handled this fiasco should give you pause about hosting anything more than a hobby site on Ning.
I have found Ning and its accounting practices shady and pretty close to borderline fraudulent. If you are an old customer that does not want to jump to their new price schemes and try to cancel the account, you will have an easier time finding a cab in Chicago on February 4th in the blizzard. When you develop a site, a community or just use a server, be decent in your practice, someone need only click a cancel button to exit just as we clicked a sign up button to sign up.
The current practice is that you need to send an email to their help department and good luck if you can get thru after that.
Good luck with anyone trying to get out of a Ning contract and make sure you not only cancel but also change you credit card number as we have just gotten multiple charges after 6 months has past since we cancelled for not one but 6 month worth of charges.
Excellent article, Nicholas. I found this very helpful when our group was hunting for a good platform for our social network. Ultimately I found over a dozen similar platforms and ended up compiling all of the research into a site featuring my reviews and inviting others to offer their own. Thank you for the great write-up!
Hi Nicolas and thank you for this fantastic review of Ning, which is still generating comments almost two years after your post!
I was wondering if you or anyone else knows of online community platforms that are similar to Ning in look/functionality/features, but provides more flexibility when it comes to site ownership.
I would like to create an interim online community site for the organisation I work with that can be up and running pretty quickly. I also would like to control its development without the time and money involved in outsourcing the job to a web developer or dealing with my organisation’s internal IT team. The platform doesn’t need to be free, but it should be affordable.
Ning appeared to tick all the boxes, but my main concern’s the ownership issue (and lack of customer service) as I’ll probably need to migrate the online community site to our host server in a year or two.
I’ve checked out some alternatives to Ning, but they don’t seem to be as easy to use or look as good and I fear they have some of the similar ownership issues.
Any hints would be much appreciated!
Thank you!
Chantale
P.S. Sorry I haven’t read through all the comments here, which might have my answer!
After reading the article and all the comments/feedback, I have yet to see anyone come up with a solution or friendly user site to build a social network site and solution for ownership issues. Has anyone come up with a answer/solution to this problem/question or do we have to be a nings’ mercy. For me who is not as much of a computer literate/or a website builder, can someone suggest me a tool/site that I should be looking at to buid a social network site and maintain ownership. Reasonable monthly fee is not an issue. Thanks
Thanks for the review!
Great review – particularly on the ownership of data – really key.
Wow, I have been deciding on whether or not to use NING for the past month now. I have combed through every inch of the website and have been looking at reviews. You have answered some of my main concerns. I am looking for a platform to build a business with strong community AND monetary value, and sole ownership of my content. So it looks like NING is finally crossed off my list. Fabulous post! Thank you.
Ning is terrible. Their customer service is almost non-existent. The majority of any help you get will come from other network creators. They have made a website where network creators can talk, but they already suspended me from the network because I was posting things they didn’t want to acknowledge (like errors and better business bureau rating of F) If you post a happy, well-to-do post about how you love ning, they will adore you. If you tell them about your problems, they will ignore you. If you continue to post about problems, they will kick you off the network with no warning / explanations.
My advice is to NEVER even get your foot in the door with Ning. now that I have members, I cannot switch to another service as I cannot bring my members with me (they belong to Ning).
My review: 1.5/10 – Do you really want to pay a large monthly fee just to be told to “ask other network creators” by their support? In fact, it took me 3 weeks of e-mails just to get them to even LOOK at my problem. NEVER, EVER, EVVVEEERRR do business with these thieves.
Great post, really helpful as I was just about to sign up to Ning. I quickly changed my mind when I heard about the ownership problems and customer service!
Does anyone know of any better sites where I can setup a social networking site? I’m happy to pay a small monthly fee.
I don’t have a web design background, but would like to trial a social network before I commit to paying a website designer to develop a custom site for me.
Thanks
For those worrying about ownership of data, if you have a Ning network, you own the data. Simple as that. They introduced a data exporter over 9 months ago and changed their t&cs when they went premium. It is by far the best out of the box white label product out there. You cant even compare Drupal, Jomsocial or KickApps. Even the help desk situation has improved and there is a truly wonderful creator community. I’d recommend Ning in a heartbeat.
Ning is C-R-A-P when you need help! I’ve been trying to change the appearance of my network for months & have sent emails to their “Help” center TO ABSOLUTELY NO AVAIL! I can hardly WAIT till my contract is up! They also decided to go up on the price of the networks AFTER I’D AGREED TO A PRICE & SIGNED A CONTRACT!
I have been using the Ning Mini, which now costs a small annual fee for two years for my small community (up to 150) It is a closed to the public group and members need to be approved. I am happy with Ning. It is easy to use, blocks potential spammers, (I had no spam ever) and an excellent platform for societies and associations who want easy communication amongst their own members.
Don’t use Ning, they charge you money to your credit card without any authorization; at soon they have your credit card they will do the charges without your authorization.
Don’t use ning and if you are using right not check your credit card statement very close.
I have been trying to fix an issue on my NING for 9 months. Today, I was banned from NING Creator for saying NING Sucks. Ning sucks. I am not allowed to invite anyone, and I have not reached the 20.000 limit for the owner which is totally none of their business. Now member can only invite 200 and can not invite from their Outlook or Linked Address books. Only Admin can but NING support does not even know that, as they say they can not let anyone do this. NING service is terrible I am Pro. I complain and I get banned by Eric Suesz
Seems Ruth is the exception to the rule.
Started with Ning in 2008; after all the hoopla in 2010, moving to Pro and still not getting any different level of service, we’ve been trying to cancel our network since October 2010. Today, we were blessed with yet another email from Robert Vu indicating the account would be going to collections – 12 months after the request to have our former network canceled/deleted/removed/expunged.
Ning is in our book synonymous with ‘incompetence’.
I STRONGLY ADVISE anyone using or thinking of using Ning to not use their regular credit cards, but rather a prepaid card so as to avoid/limit erroneous charges on/to your card should you decide to ‘close’ your account.