A bright article in Fast Company describes the 5 things that an outstanding and highly successful site like Ning.com got right. While we admire Ning, and love reading Fast Company, here are some of our comments (in shy parentheses):
1. Embraced Support of Small Communities. (A very important approach indeed, but what Web 2.0 did NOT?)
2. Focused on empowering groups. (Not sure how this is different from #1?)
3. Introduced Ning ID Concept. (How many of the largest Websites do not have a similar approach? This is a right move, but hardly so significant as to amount to 20% of "what's right with Ning".)
4. Stood up to porn and banned it. (Umm, read Marc Andreessen own blog posts on the subject, really - it's a lot more complicated than "standing up to porn".)
5. Put Gina Bianchini at the helm with Marc Andreessen. (Miss Bianchini is a brilliant person, but other than 2 years at a small ad analytics start-up incubated at Sequoia and quickly sold, has no start-up experience prior to Ning.)
The true great 5 things that Ning got right are:
1. Raising $120,000,000 from brand name VCs.
2. Putting an iconic leader, Andreessen, at the helm.
3. Investing millions in PR and marketing and in talented business and development staff of almost 200
4. Offering LOTS of freebies where all others charged money for a long time and not caring much about the bottom line for several years.
5. Giving porn enough time to grow Ning (check Alexa to see how much traffic porn sites still account for on Ning!) before having to ban it since advertisers started to black-list Ning.
Ning is a great company, with great business and great strategy, but not because it supports small communities, offers Ning ID, banned porn and has Gina at the helm (smart and impressive as she is).
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