On The Ning Value Proposition
Well, Ning version 2 is out! So, many congratulations to all the people at Ning - it’s always a big deal to get something new launched!
With version 2 being fresh, now would seem a good time to take stock of Ning’s core value proposition. The Ning value proposition seems to be thus: people will prefer to base their on-line communities around a single provider, rather than to build an on-line community using “best-of-breed” components from multiple sources.
In other words… if you want photos to be part of your on-line community, you won’t want to use Flickr. Instead you’ll put your photos on Ning. If you want videos, you won’t use YouTube, you’ll put your videos on Ning. If you want a forum, you won’t use one of the forums like phpBB that come with a web hosting package, or a free forum somewhere, you’ll use a Ning forum. And, if you want a blog, you won’t use Wordpress.com, you’ll use a Ning blog instead.
I’m really not sure about all this. I can see that some people would prefer the “single provider” Ning route; and I can see that some people would prefer a “best-of-breed” solution made from different components from different suppliers. But I don’t have a good feel for how it will pan out statistically… to me the “best-of-breed” route seems much more attractive. But that’s just me.
Flickr and YouTube have been phenomonally successful by becoming the “best-in-class” suppliers of focussed services. But then again, MySpace has been phenomonally successful by being a “single provider” of services, none of which are that compelling individually (or taken together, for that matter).
So, I guess this really could go both ways…
Asam Bashir wrote:
I’ve been investigating MySpace undercover and it is a curious development. It must have the worst servers in the whole industry, they repair the thing on a daily basis, the bad code all over with overloaded pages makes it crawl, yet still, it’s very successful. It’s tapping into an addiction mechanism with reward through feel-good-factor:
http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19225831.200-just-cant-get-enough.html
http://www.newscientisttech.com/channel/tech/mg19225835.500-web-20-is-all-about-the-feelgood-factor.html
Myspace is a radio station from today as well,
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/02/28/orb_jacks_myspace/
Posted 02 Mar 2007 at 3:55 pm ¶
Fabricio Zuardi wrote:
On Ning you still can go with the “best-of-breed” if you want to. Take videos for instance, you don’t need to upload anything if you don’t like Ning’s encoding or if you don’t like the Ning’s video player, you can use the embed code from YouTube, GoogleVideo, Blip.tv, Daylimotion, Metacafe, VideoEgg, Myspace, RevVer or any other service you like, the embedded videos will be part of the navigation flow as if they were uploaded, *and* you got better (in my biased opinion) moderation tools.
More important, you have control over the source code to implement or change anything you like/dislike, that kind of power you don’t see on many of the “best-of-breed”. Having full control over the code means that you can replace any aspect or feature that you find lacking in some way for a better option from a different supplier.
I don’t honestly think that people prefer to base their on-line communities around a single provider (although some in fact do).
People will prefer to base their on-line communities around the providers they choose and having the power to customize is essential for people to mashup the best services available, the starting set of features on a Ning social network is just that, a starting basic set, it is up to the network creator to replace/enhance/drop the building blocks that don’t fit their needs..
Posted 07 Mar 2007 at 8:50 am ¶
Marc Andreessen wrote:
Hi Simon — we would describe the Ning value proposition as something a little different: the ability to create your own social network for anything.
With the added ability to customize it to your heart’s content, from the design and look and feel all the way into the underlying code (against a very rich set of web services API’s that we provide that make many social networking functions very easy to implement).
We think that MySpace and Facebook are great — they let you create and (in MySpace’s case) customize your profile page and connect to other people within their social network. But they don’t let you create your own social networks for anything.
We also think that Flickr, Youtube, and the like are great, but while they provide the ability to upload and share various media types, they also don’t let you create your own social network for anything.
I’d argue that these services will all coexist peacefully for a long time to come — in fact, Ning makes it very easy to embed content from Youtube, MySpace, and many other services within a Ning social network or profile page — and Ning makes it very easy to export information or content out to other services as well.
But in the long run, people opt for the services that give them the most freedom and flexibility to create their own worlds, as opposed to belonging to someone else’s world.
And that is our goal.
Posted 08 Mar 2007 at 5:54 am ¶
simon wrote:
Thanks Fabricio and Marc for the valuable comments. Very helpful. Marc, it goes without saying that you understand where the value in Ning lies rather better than I do
I do there are a few wrinkles on this whole topic though.
There are obviously some business challenges (monetising content etc.) everyone needs to work through when it comes having web services “co-exist peacefully”.
And there’s something weird in this whole social networking area, in that quality of the back-end software seems totally unrelated to business success. So I don’t know how effective competing by writing high-quality back-end software will be.
However, the issue I really struggle with (which I didn’t talk about in the main blog entry) is the tension between people’s desire to create their own “small vertical worlds” (Ning) vs being part of single, large “horizontal worlds” (YouTube, MySpace, Flickr etc), and the benefits they get through that.
Specfically, it’s obvious to me how there are many and varied “network effect” benefits in the horizontal worlds. It’s not obvious to me that the same kind of benefits exist in separate vertical worlds.
Of course, just because *I* struggle with this issue doesn’t mean that it’s *really* an issue. I may just not understand something.
I guess the test of how strong these network effects are should be born out by popularity and growth rates of various types of services - vertical and horizontal…
Posted 08 Mar 2007 at 10:26 am ¶