Ning Alternatives, Collaboration, & Self Hosting

And of course, there’s the other issue of how Ning’s decision to move to paid content will affect those who have been using it to hold onto content, conversations, and student work in addition to teacher reflections. There’s a lot of professional development happening in Ning networks right now, and teachers who choose not to pay for the upgrade will be forced to either painstakingly copy and paste materials into a less sharable, less persistent, less searchable format or to lose all of their work. The same is true of researchers who have been working in social networks for the last several years.

It’s certainly true that Ning’s move should serve as a wakeup call, but to my mind it also highlights another issue: the responsibility that software and network developers have to their users. Ning is notoriously bad at recognizing and living up to its end of the bargain, which is perhaps part of the reason why it’s had to scramble for another model.

Great idea.

Just added BlastGroups to the document – http://www.blastgroups.com

BlastGroups is another free alternative to Ning. Their free group websites offer a lot of the same functionality as Ning such as: a customizable group website, blogs, events, discussion forums, activity streams, etc.

Alec,

I applaud your efforts to help people think through looking after their data, which is always important. But I guess I’d ask a question of the folks that are so adamant that Ning has not been responsible in their dealings: What responsibility does a company, offering a free service, have to people who aren’t paying customers? More importantly, why would folks invest such time, energy and effort in creating these spaces and communities without giving thought to how to get that data back out of Ning in the event that the free-ness or the company went away?

What responsibility do network organizers and creators have for ensuring that they are choosing to build sustainable spaces? Why is that some third-party’s responsibility?

Shouldn’t folks who are totally reliant on Ning, and angry with them, be upset with themselves, if at least a little?

I hope that Ning will carryout a responsible transition for folks, assisting with APIs and tools that help folks get their data out. But that wasn’t really Ning’s deal from the start – so why are folks upset with them now?

Again, I appreciate your positive spin on this problem and the awareness that it creates for teachers and community organizers to think about their exit strategies whenever they create or share important information.

Great post and initiative. I´ve also read John Mak´s from CCK09, it´s great to see how active some members of the community are in looking for solutions and helping us develop collaborative problem-solving. I also recommend Indian network creator Gaurav Mishra thoughts on the issue, I´ve found it quite an interesting read. http://bit.ly/bfWB7a

Thanks!

Tried opening the Google Docs document but somehow it’s not properly opening. Will try again later to see if WiserEarth Groups is listed there already.

I work for WiserEarth, so this is somewhat an advertisement, but WiserEarth Groups offer similar tools (and more, like wiki) to Ning and is free to use and free of ads. More at http://www.wiserearth.org/article/wiserearthgroups

Hope some of you find it useful for your work. Feel free to contact me at bowo[at]wiserearth.org if you have any question about it.

I think Bud and Alec are talking about one of the key issues here. There is now a very well written license available that would negate any future problems. It is the AGPL. The license allows client users of software running on a server (e.g. a website) to download their own copy of the source code. Though this type of licensing isn’t hugely popular yet, it’s use is growing. One example is with the software used to run identi.ca which is in sharp contrast to Twitter. Microbloggers who use identi.ca are ensured that if the site makes changes that are unpopular, users can fork the project and take it in the direction they wish.

What I would love to see is a Free software version of Ning-like services licensed under something like the AGPL. Then headaches like this would be avoided. Though I have to agree with Bud – users who now find themselves shafted have should be mad at no one but themselves.

Elgg.com will launch a own hosted version of the popular Elgg social network platform in the Fall. You can register for a Beta invite at Elgg.com. News at http://elgg.com/pressjune.php.