A HUGE SET BACK FOR ALL NING SITE OWNERS

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Permalink Reply by Matt LaClear on September 28, 2009 at 4:04pm

Here's what Laura from Ning suggests we can do:

On any Ning Network you are a member of, you can message your friends directly through the message center. If you want to invite your friends from one Ning Network to another one, you can easily send them a message and invite them to join (if you are the Network Creator, you can use the invite code found on the Manage-> Network Privacy page). You can also always use a potential member’s email address to invite them directly.

How doable is this?

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Permalink Reply by Matt LaClear on September 28, 2009 at 8:42pm

After doing some more research on this I think we're all going to be just fine with this new rule. Our inboxes are certainly going to have less invitations in them!

We can all still send invitations out to our friends on the other Ning networks to come join us here at Sta.rtup.biz. We just have to physically log in to the other sites and send the invitations via the messaging systems of each site.

Which equates to more work for us all. But this network is damn useful to new online marketers that we almost should feel obligated to invite as many folks as we can here!

I am going to go do just that right now!

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Permalink Reply by Nascent Dynamics ( ) on September 30, 2009 at 3:53am

Hi Matt,

I respectfully dissagree.

The more likely reason there are less invites being sent is quite possibly due to the updated Ning networking system as you suggest. Not everybody can just blindly message everybody else. I am sure Ning made this adjustment a result of wide open sites where online marketers rely on mass messaging.

However, the reason they made this change is an improvement in my opinion. I personally don't like being constantly solicited and resolicited with invitations to groups and networks through marketing campaigns- especially by all the MLM, Network Marketing, and Home-Based Business opportunities out there. Suggesting it would be so much more convenient to invite all your friends across all your networks to a site like SUp sounds nice, but if that is the quality to with how you treat the people you network with on those sites, then it wouldn't be surprising to find a decline of new members, and even a decline in activity from existing "numbers".

I think it is the qualititative and personalized aspect of Ning that sets it apart as an online social networking platform. People can just be members of some site, create their own social network, and be a part of the entire social network of Ning users together. Rather than blindly invite people to other networks, I think it is far more appropriate to have your own social network where you promote all your individual interests, talk about/ feed those into the networks you are a part of in conversations, and let people come to you. They will if they actually get to engage you and get to know you. Or, for MLM'rs and the like, it is going to seem like a tremendous hit...far more work in actually networking with people.

In principle, it is a technical challenge. Do you blast out across your contacts because attending to each individual is unfeasible for the volume percent you are going to get out of it? Or do you focus in on key target prospects and work them passively until they bite? I will tell you this; I do even less clicking! I think there is a place for sending out a rare invitation or message to your contacts. So this discussion you have here turned out quite useful. Thanks.

Best,

Anthony

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Permalink Reply by Matt LaClear on September 30, 2009 at 6:33am

There were enough fail safes to protect the inboxes of the members who wanted them protected.

I for one have several thousand friends scattered across the Ning networks and I too got tired of the constant invitations. So I logged in and updated my privacy feature in a matter of seconds and stopped the invitations from being sent to me. Seemed like a pretty simple and effective system. That way the only people who continued receiving invitations were people who wanted to receive them.

One of the strengths of Twitter is that it allows members to "eavesdrop" into the conversations their friends are having and even jump into them if they so desire. It's what makes Twitter so interactive and madly viral.

Ning offers no such mechanisms. The comment walls and forums are completely inadequate for the task of creating massive interactivity and viral activity amongst it's members.

It's my contention that the only such mechanism Ning had to facilitate this was the mass invitation feature. It allowed friends to keep up with their other friends on WHATEVER network they joined WHENEVER they did so.

Sure that meant folks were jumping around. But so what. It's what they wanted to do!

The admins shouting praises for the removal of the mass invitation system are mostly individuals who treat their Ning networks as if it were their web 1.0 website. They view their members as property that needs protecting. Rather than learning how to facilitate the active communication amongst the Ning members they'd rather instead limit it.

Why so?

To keep them to themselves for fear their members will join another network and never come back to theirs.

Such a system is identical to what free trade has done for the consumer. It requires admins to provide great content that causes members to come back again and again and again. In doing so they would strengthen their network even more so.

But all that is gone now.

Which goes against everything I know and love about web 2.0.

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Permalink Reply by SUp.biz, COO on September 30, 2009 at 10:34pm

At the end of the day, it comes down to a simple graph that has quality on one site and quantity on the other.

The members that join sta.rtup.biz now are all quality members that are here to engage and network with other members. Before this change was made, it was really hard to identify who was a quality member and who was here to collect as many friends as possible.

Change is always difficult when it is thrown upon the masses without warning. But with change comes opportunity. One thing I know for sure... The times that I have had the greatest ideas that made the most money happened after significant changes were made within an industry. When I see big changes like this, I get excited.

Matt, I know you are a highly intelligent and incredibly creative marketer. Take a few weeks to brainstorm about how to use this to your advantage. Just think of the tens of thousands of people that were marketing to ning members that did not have enough skin in the game to keep going after this change was made. Your competition has virtually been eliminated. This is a huge opportunity. Get back in there and come up with another system.

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Permalink Reply by Matt LaClear on October 1, 2009 at 12:37pm

You're right of course!

I was just thinking about that last night. This Ning generated tsunami has completely waxed the competition.

No more whining from me!

Thanks for the head adjustment man!

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Permalink Reply by Nascent Dynamics ( ) on October 3, 2009 at 7:22pm

Nice response Matt,

I was dissapointed when Ning first dropped the Ning bar at the top of the site that you could expand out and see your friends, networks, and send cross network invitations etc. What they do now using Ning.com as a social network in itself is allow members to put up profiles that include their networks and so on. So the networking across different social networks is now sort of a given...or a redundancy...since all of us using the platform are a part of the Ning network. One reason I think they dropped that was to add privacy options if you didn't want to communicate your network activity. At the same time, your activity now shows by default, so it is kind of an inconvenience for those who want privacy to go through and adjust their settings.

I personally view the adjustment of settings as a burden in this case of mass messaging. The problem as you can see by looking at my comment wall here is that it is inundated with unwanted ads and solicitations. I could moderate...but that just means more work for me. Same thing with deleting. I'm more about accessibility and responsiveness. If you check my history on site, you will see me responsive to almost every intelligible comment made to me directly or about some subject I am actively engaged in. The same goes for invitations. For those people who take the time to get to know me, and learn that I would likely be interested in some network they are a part of, I am happy to receive their invitations. It's the blind, blanket, essentially "cold calling" invitations that are a nuissance. The whole, "well it's a free country" argument is pathetic, and it's a disservice to bother people to the point they basically have to put "call blocking" on their line in.

So my view on the change is it is a tremendous improvement at the expense of those mass marketers- an improvement that will make the quality of experience for more end-users of the platform better, and will necessarily require more direct engagement and "actual" networking. For those of us network creators who are open with our networks, welcome cross networking, and who find associating with Ning as a platform worth promoting, I believe one of the biggest knocks against it has just been improved.

Not that I blame you for using the feature to be good at what you do in your marketing strategy. It is a new game and you did well to adapt to it early and specialize in it. I've found reliance on many of these features to be a risk you seriously have to consider as they can be changed for one reason or another. My approach has adjusted to allow for it by using the features as they were intended as well as relying on my common sense of personal service. It is a learning process though so I do suggest reading into changes as they arise and considering the reasons why Ning thought it an improvement.

Consequently, I personally prefer the discussion forum features that allow one to follow certain threads. If you really have something people want, then in your relations with them I am sure it will come up. Then it would probably be their pleasure to follow some thing you are doing or to join your group or even network. If you find the mass marketing isn't working out for you and your competitors, then perhaps you will notice others succeeding in the more qualitative approaches. Technically speaking though, I haven't completely written off the approaches of mass marketers. There's still something to it. I was really interested to see how your value-added approach was working, because it appeared to be a hybrid that might have a more effective balance of time and effort than say getting to know everyone you meet comprehensively.

Best,

Anthony Reardon
Nascent Dynamics ( ) Modern Business for the Modern Environment

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Permalink Reply by Chris Ward on October 1, 2009 at 3:17pm

Hello Matt,
Let's do the obvious and send out a petition to identify how many members feel strongly about this issue. Sta.rtup.biz is my favorite, but I am a members of three other sites as well. I was unaware that I couldn't invite friends from other ning sites. Let me know what you come up with.

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Permalink Reply by Matt LaClear on October 1, 2009 at 3:53pm

Good idea Chris. Go ahead and create it and I'll be the first to sign it. But I think the wisest investment of our time will be to come up with new strategies to build our businesses in this new environment.

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