WidgetLaboratory

There are only a few people in the Online Business World who have earned our undying loyalty and respect. Most of them are from outside of the Silicon Valley and not "drinking the Kool-Aid" of the techblogs where borrowing millions of dollars from a VC makes your company "worth" 10x the amount of your liability. Seth Godin, Ted Turner, Richard Branson, Steve Pavlina, Mark Cuban, Jason Fried, and Bob Parsons are some of my personal favorites (just to name a few).

Whether you are a large company or small, it is important to remember that viral marketing is now available to all disgruntled customers. Even those without $100 million in funding can have their revenge served up nice and cold.... across millions of web browsers. Especially if they are musicians!

Best be sure that your company has the facts on your side before turning a cold shoulder on customer service... or you might end up with a memorable jingle that costs you a lot more than doing the right thing in the first place.

Full Story: http://www.davecarrollmusic.com/story... 

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged. They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world. United: Song 1 is the first of those songs. United: Song 2 has been written and video production is underway. United: Song 3 is coming. I promise.

Focusing on output can become quite an obsession when one is in the creative arts or marketing field. How many blog entries did you write this week? How many widgets did you sell? How many new customers did you add to your roster? When one is entirely focused on the output of your creative work, it is easy forget the need to spend time on input.

Think of it like a rechargeable battery. If one is constantly drawing amps from that battery, with no charge time, then one may  (quite literally) drain the battery past the point where it can be recharged. Not good.

WidgetLaboratory has been spending the last few days working on input rather than our output. Why? Two reasons:

This video is seriously NSFW, but also a hilarious spoof on the state of our world today. Digital media, social networking tools, and the blurring of the line between private and public data.

Even if you are ROFL while watching... you should take a moment to consider the importance of becoming proficient with social networking tools. If you aren't knowledgeable enough to control your own online destiny... someone else may do it for you.

In an unprecedented and completely unexpected move, Ning today has announced that they are reversing all recent decisions that have adversely affected Network Creators and 3rd Party Developers.

Speaking to a panel of Journalists at the High Altitude Network Group meetup (HANGme) at Mt. Whitney, Ning's CEO Gina Bianchini confirmed that the move was "long overdue" and resulted from a recent moment of clarity. Stated Ms. Bianchini, "One morning I came into the office and realized that I'm tired of playing the role of the villain. Social Networking is about making people happy, after all, so dog-gonnit I'm going to do everything I can to make people happy!"

As part of the new corporate strategy of appeasement, Ning has invited all Network Creators to a special dinner being hosted at the Carl's Jr. in Foster City, CA on Friday, April 31st, where everyone will be given a coupon for $5 off of any Double Kentucky Bourbon Burger (limit one per Network Creator). "The best way to a person's heart is through their stomach", stated Jason Rosenthal, Ning's Senior VP of Business Operations, "so what's wrong with a little 'fiesta' on our dime?"

Demonstrating the sincerity of their convictions, and new business strategy, Ning has also reached out to 3rd party developers with an olive branch. A copy of the correspondence recently sent by Ning to all developers who suddenly found their products and customers out on the street was published at the Ning Blog, and ...

Why won't Ning honor it's promise to Network Owner's that they are free to leave at any time and take their members and content with them when they go?

Isn't this directly in contradiction with the whole premise of building one's social network about "anything"? After years of hearing and believing this message, we're not surprised that Network Creators are furious with Ning, and Gina Bianchini in particular, for leading them to believe that they could trust Ning with their labor of love.

Yet, thankfully, the Internet is an unforgiving forum for breaching public trust. Why? Because it is impossible to hide from your previous statements.

While we give John Stewart and the DailyShow credit for perfecting the art of calling people out on the contradictions between their public statements and present deeds... see if you can find the juicy bits in this video of Gina Bianchini from September 23, 2007. Compare her statements then to what is going on now.

Members who uploaded content to particular niche sites created on Ning before March 11, 2009 were given no reason to believe that they were actually uploading content to Ning.com or some other large site. It really wasn't complicated.

Enjoy!

Well, it didn't take long to verify that Ning is not going to allow Network Creators to leave with their content any time soon.

What strikes us as especially ironic is the fact that Ning DID provide a (half-broken) way for all adult site owners to remove their content, which allowed WidgetLaboratory to move thousands of those sites over to SocialGO. Even though this was ridiculously crude for a company with as much cash and employees as Ning, it clearly demonstrated that there is no technical reason why content cannot be provided to all Network Creators.

It is rather sad to see that Ning is suggesting that this Network Creator's only choices are to either transfer all members and content to someone who will remain on Ning, or to delete everything... just flush years of work and participation down the drain.

WOW.

Here's the correspodence that was sent over to us this evening:

[Customer - 03/11/2009]
To: helpcenter@ning.com
I am not happy at all that you have opened up all my private personal content to millions of people via the new Ning. In doing so you have forced me to deactivate my account. I am requesting you give me my sites content. As per this blog post by Gina Bianchini.
http://blog.ning.com/2008/10/the-ning-platform-a-few-updates.html
Thanks for your cooperation



[The Ning Team - 03/11/2009]
Hey there!
I'm sorry that you feel this way, and I'll be glad to help!
...
If you'd still like to deactivate your account, I'm afraid that you'll need to either delete your social networks or find another member to transfer them to. If you'd like further instructions on how to do this, I'll be happy to provide them.

Best,
Henry




[Customer - 03/11/2009]
To: helpcenter@ning.com
Thanks Henry for responding.
...
Can you give me info on how I can export my network content.
Thanks




[The Ning Team - 03/11/2009]
Hey there!

While it isn't possible at present to export your social networks' content, what you can do is transfer ownership of your social networks to another member of the networks. To do this, just fill out the form on the following page for each network:
http://help.ning.com/cgi-bin/ning.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=3521&p_created=1230949540

Feel free to ask if there's anything else I can do for you!

Best,
Henry

After spending a day or so on the new "Ning.com" site (NingBook), we have to admit... FaceBook was never this much fun!

Why?

On FaceBook, all the participants are aware and informed in advance that they are joining FaceBook. As a result, people tend to exercise discretion when joining a group, posting images, making friendships, etc. Since most people use LinkedIn for professional relationships and FaceBook for personal, there is an informed consent as to what one is doing when participating. Anyone who chooses to mix their business and pleasure on FaceBook is subject to getting some unwanted public attention.

Thankfully for curious types like us, NingBook saves everyone the trouble of making informed decisions or providing informed consent. Instead, they just unilaterally went ahead and opened up years of private meta-data about networks, friendships, members, and relationships. It is now endlessly entertaining to browse the data from previously private networks that has been exposed for all to see.

As a result of their bravado, Ning can now claim to potential buyers that they have a FaceBook competitor with more than 20 million "members". No matter that these people didn't know that had joined... Ning seems oblivious to the moral and contractual dilemma that it has created for itself by changing their TOS (once again) and then abducting these members from the individual Network Creators.

Besides the published promises that Network Creators own their own data and membership, Ning has also been accepting premium fees for "white label" services by a percentage of networks. The creators and members of these networks have been relying (to their detriment) on the promise that Ning was a platform for them to build their own membership, brand, and niche. Tough Luck. The release of NingBook demonstrates the last in what now appear to have been a series of carefully planned steps.

Here are a couple examples of the fun things that can now occur on NingBook:

1. NETWORK RELATIONSHIPS: It is now possible for anyone (including a client or competitor) to see all the Networks on which one is a member. Don't want your CPA colleagues to know that you are into collecting miniature dolls?... OOPS, too late!


2. FRIEND RELATIONSHIPS: Professional friend data is mixed with personal friend data. This means that unintended (and in some cases "disasterous") relationships are revealed from previously private networks.  Imagine a person's surprise when they discover that they have been "outed" because they befriended someone on a professional network who just happens to be into some more "private" stuff on their own personal time.  "Funny, I didn't realize that my friend Principal Johnson from the High School Network was into wearing pink panties... and, wait... is that STEVE from accounting too? Yikes!"


3. LOSS OF BRAND, LOYALTY AND COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE: Network Creators who spent years building brand recognition, customer loyalty, and competitive advantage on "their" Networks now get the special treat of having all their relationships and members merged into NingBook along with those of their competition. A search on Ning.com for "Recruiting" reveals the silky smooth ease with which one can now conduct competitive research across ALL the 424 recruiting networks. Too bad that these Network Creators had the reasonable expectation that they owned their brand, members, and white-label. It is slightly ironic that these Network Creators will now be "recruiting" members for NingBook instead of building their own online presence.
   
   



4. OPT-OUT, NOT IN: NingBook features are all "opt-out" instead of "opt-in" for each individual member. One can't do this globally for all members of a Network. This provides Ning with the convenient excuse of having to directly contact each and every one of your network members in order to inform them that your network was actually built on the Ning platform. "Come on and see all your stuff on one convenient home page instead of going back to the individual Network". Too bad that all these NC's were paying Ning sizeable premiums every month for white-label services in order to hide that very fact. Se la vie!


5. INFLATED MEMBERSHIP NUMBERS: The opt-out requirement ensures that most members will never make their profile private. Most never joined NingBook and don't know what it is. Instead they joined a particular niche network. It is likely that most members simply ignored the recent message from Ning as spam and have taken no action. This works to Ning's advantage by allowing them to publish hugely inflated numbers to the tech community, even though these "members" have no clue that they belong to NingBook.


6. PLAIN TEXT URL SEARCH: It is super convenient that all the names of members and networks are all in plain text. Unlike FaceBook where you have unique numerical ID's like 12312asd23 to make it hard for a human to exploit, Ning made it easy. Just type in the name of your favorite member or network and you're good to go. http://www.ning.com/kyle/networks Sweet!


7. BETTER THAN RSS FEED: Why bother visiting the main site of any Network Creator who is paying large premiums to Ning to run their own Ads meant for YOU to see? It is SO much easier to simply keep tabs on everything from your own NingBook home page... Ad Free!
   
   

   

Ning has demonstrated a clear pattern of contempt for its customers, especially Network Creators. Several times now they have changed direction in the middle of the night and taken-away features, rights, or services and then explained it away with Orwellian Doublespeak which seems to be detached from the objective facts.

Network Creators on Ning should take a good look at what has happened now that their hard-work has been absconded. With Ning having locked-up their network and reneged on their written promise to provide migration tools to anyone who asked, there are few attractive options. Nevertheless, here are a couple ideas to start:

1. Make a written demand to Ning that you be provided with your complete network content, as previously promised by Gina Bianchini. As she stated, "(w)e will soon offer a similar mechanism for content so that it won’t require a sophisticated understanding of our APIs to back-up or migrate the content of your network somewhere else"
   
   


2. Create a free starter or Premium site at SocialGO so that you can immediately migrate your members with WidgetLaboratory's member migration tool. This will provide you with a new "home" while you work on the transition. We believe that SocialGO may also provide a discounted incentive to anyone who moves to Premium from Ning. The LAB will assist anyone who needs help with making the transition to SocialGO


3. Stop Paying for Premium on Ning. After all, you no longer own your members, network privacy, or white-label... so why continue to pay Ning? Save the money and let Ning put Google Ads back on your site. Then start building your own custom site on SocialGO, since they have a written guarantee that your network, member, and data are all yours and this will not change. WidgetLaboratory will show you how you can use your old Ning site as a free "archive" which can be linked and accessed from inside of your new SocialGO site. SocialGO has an OPEN-API and WidgetStore, so you will have an infinite flexibility into the future for turning your site into something unique... and not simply slap on a few Open-Social toys while you send your members to Ning


4. Spread the Word. The reason that Ning has been able to take such extraordinary measures at the expense of Network Creators is that they closed their public forums and discussions, and dispersed or expelled any disgruntled Network Creators so that no dissent could escape or grow. No Longer. You are welcome to use WidgetLaboratory and SocialGO as the forum for airing your grievances and start fresh. WidgetLaboratory believes in an open and free discussion of all topics related to the products and social networking. Trolls can stay home, but customers with legitimage issues or complaints are always welcome.

Though it would be nice to imagine that things will get better on Ning... it's clearly not going to happen. The last year has been spent on unfurling their original game plan for creating NingBook.

Ning's latest action demonstrates that they have zero concern over individual Network Creators. If you happen to be one,  why not return the favor and vote with your wallet. Stop paying Ning for any premium service and move your network and members to SocialGO where you can get what you really want and need.

We've been amused by recent developments in the Social Networking space, particularly the actions by Ning as of late. It seems that they have an almost unlimited supply of contempt for their customers, especially the early-adopters. Their latest move reminds us of the old Star Trek episode where another Mr. Spock exists in a Mirror-Universe.

The characters in the Mirror Universe are generally the same, but their personalities are, on the whole, much more aggressive, mistrustful, and opportunistic. Whereas the original Star Trek usually depicts an optimistic future which values peace and understanding, the Mirror Universe is be marred by continual warfare, and compassion is seen as a liability.

Similarly, Ning's original mission statement and business plan outlined a place for creative individuals to build social networks about "anything". Ning claimed to be benevolent, and interested in providing a platform for networks to thrive and grow based on the hard work of their Network Creators. Yet somehow they've managed to jump into a Mirror-Universe as of late. Despite increasing their premium fees, restricting any outside development, and closing their Open API, Ning continues to get even more aggressive with this latest move by literally absconding the members of all Networks created on the platform. The only rational explanation for this extraordinary breach of trust, along with the last-minute TOS change that allowed it to happen, is their "brilliant" concept of creating a Facebook competitor on the backs of Network Creators. Perhaps then they are actually borrowing the tactics of the Borg from Start Trek NG instead?

"Strength is irrelevant. Resistance is futile. We wish to improve ourselves. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service ours." -- The Borg, Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "The Best of Both Worlds" (1990)

Ning's latest provocation means that anyone who joins a network hosted on Ning, even those paying more than $55.00 per month for premium services (white label), will FIRST become a member of Ning.com and SECOND will become a member of that network. As such, each one of these members can and will be contacted by Ning directly, will be able to contact and connect with other Ning.com members across the web, and will be provided with a Facebook "like" home page on Ning.com that lets them AGGREGATE all content from any Ning network. As a result, they will not have to spend much time on any particular network any more than Facebook members spend much time on Groups within Facebook.

Sounds like a perfect justification for Network Creators to stop paying Ning $55.00 per month on premium services. After all, what's the point of giving Ning your money just for the privilege of helping them to build the collective... er... Ning.com network?

Or... maybe these Network Creators should just beam themselves over to the SocialGO universe?

If Ning allegedly means "Peace" in Chinese... does the Mirror-Universe Ning (Gnin) mean "War" ?

 

Create your own social network for "anything" ... so long as it is not for adults, you don't piss us off, and you don't complain to anyone. We'll be sure to keep you quiet by removing all public discussions about our mistakes, broken products, or lack of interest in what YOU want to have happen on Ning No API, No backup of Data, No Migration tools, Passive-Aggressive behavior towards Network Creators, no 3rd party development except Open-Social toys Terms of Service change whenever we like (three times and counting), and always to the detriment of our Network Creator customers We own all your members and will use them at our discretion in order to create a Ning version of Facebook. We charge you a premium to provide help, even if you are already paying $55.00 per month for premium services We have enough VC cash in the bank to be contemptious towards our customers		Create your own social network for "anything" ... since we're not in bed with Google you can make adult networks as well. Feel free to share your complaints because you've paid for the right to be heard and we want to know how to make things the way YOU want Open API, Full backup of Data, Open Migration tools, Full Support for Network Creators, Open WidgetStore for 3rd party developers Terms of Service remain stable and always focused on our core promise - that Network Creators come FIRST and foremost You own all your members and we will never contact them in any way unless you request to be an indexed site We provide reasonable help free to all customers who are paying $45.00 per month for premium services We are a publicly traded company and have to earn the respect and loyalty of our customers
Actual Letter from Jason Rosenthal