The author brings up some valid questions (such as highlighting the de-emphasis on social networks and the supposedly low numbers of network owners relative to the company's earlier claims) but it's ridiculous to suggest that Ning is a "pyramid scam". It's poorly sourced and poorly argued accusations like this that undermine the credibility of the entire post.
Agreed, I had to stop reading when the drawing of the pyramid scheme came up, as its complete speculation based on a move Ning made to email all users of the site, even those who are members of paid sites (who pay specifically to avoid adverts). That move is newsworthy in itself but this is highly speculative and sensationalized.
"simply take all of those members and combine them into one super-site, Ning.com"
I have to say if that was a planned scam, it is quite funny to plan on "let's find millions of members". If you can find millions of members, you don't need to scam.
This post was created around the same time as all of the Bernie Madoff "everybody and everything is a pyramid scam!" insanity going through the news for awhile.
If I remember correctly, pretty much any story with "pyramid scheme" or "ponzi scheme" in the title got massive amount of linkage.
I really didn't understand the pyramid scam part of this article, but many of the other points that it makes are totally true. My company got bit when they disabled access to the php source code without warning back in the fall. We had customized a Ning site fairly heavily.
Also they used to have a REST api to access the data that was stored in their "Ning Content Store". I'm not sure when they disabled access to that but before they did it was barely usable anyway. It was full of undocumented bugs that would cause your operations to fail.
I wonder what benefits does Ning provide? Surely by now there should be open source projects covering the same set of functionalities? I think you can not even take your account from one Ning network to the next?
At least these days a Ning account is global--I just signed up for a Ning powered site a few weeks back and it was made clear early on that the login would work for any Ning site.
It seems like all social sites eventually have insurrections like this, certainly Facebook has this all the time. Do people think this is just part of the cost of doing business, or is there a better way to deal with user complaints?
Sounds like this is how Ning will raise it's next millions of dollars of financing. By giving each person their own "Social Network" they have a way to utilize the existing userbase in a new way and go ask for more money.
12 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 38.7 ms ] threadThe author brings up some valid questions (such as highlighting the de-emphasis on social networks and the supposedly low numbers of network owners relative to the company's earlier claims) but it's ridiculous to suggest that Ning is a "pyramid scam". It's poorly sourced and poorly argued accusations like this that undermine the credibility of the entire post.
I have to say if that was a planned scam, it is quite funny to plan on "let's find millions of members". If you can find millions of members, you don't need to scam.
If I remember correctly, pretty much any story with "pyramid scheme" or "ponzi scheme" in the title got massive amount of linkage.
Also they used to have a REST api to access the data that was stored in their "Ning Content Store". I'm not sure when they disabled access to that but before they did it was barely usable anyway. It was full of undocumented bugs that would cause your operations to fail.
The link is not working for me, perhaps the first incidence I've seen of a site being "Hacker Newsed" ..
Can you really trust your platform(cloud) provider? Is your data save? Will you ever be able to get it back?