Ning was the first company to realize that there will be room for Niche social networks. It was founded in 2005 not long after facebook was launched. They want to be the network of all the Niche social networks.They were free for a while. As they were burning a lot of money, they thought they would charge for the service - a subscription based business model in 2010. The traffic went down immediately but seems to have become stable. Ning changed the CEO during the near bankruptcy crisis and the new CEO claimed they are profitable after changing to only paid model for about two months in 2010. About 120 million of VC money went into the company and it was acquired by Glam media in sep 2011 for 150 million. After 6 years of operation, you get a return of $30 million. That is not a good return on investment by any VC standards but still it was not a bust.
Can Ning go big? It seems to be a difficult task but few things can be done.
1) Ning has to showcase important usecases -
1) Family networks
2) Student networks
3) Corporate networks.
3) Have two different market strategies - one for B2C and another for B2B.
4) Create templates for different networks -
a) Family networks - photo slide shows, updates, videos,
b) Student networks - Files hosting, calendar, - in effect it should be able to replace a LMS. This should be ready made LMS
c) Corporate networks - Videos, product downloads, file downloads, blogs, faqs
5) The key is to make people think about social networks in a similar way to creating a website.
Big Corporates need to see value in niche social networks to foster their customers - Few B2B companies can have their customer only social networks. A new model that can replace forums and user groups.
Will Glam media take Ning to the next level?
Can Ning go big? It seems to be a difficult task but few things can be done.
1) Ning has to showcase important usecases -
1) Family networks
2) Student networks
3) Corporate networks.
3) Have two different market strategies - one for B2C and another for B2B.
4) Create templates for different networks -
a) Family networks - photo slide shows, updates, videos,
b) Student networks - Files hosting, calendar, - in effect it should be able to replace a LMS. This should be ready made LMS
c) Corporate networks - Videos, product downloads, file downloads, blogs, faqs
5) The key is to make people think about social networks in a similar way to creating a website.
Big Corporates need to see value in niche social networks to foster their customers - Few B2B companies can have their customer only social networks. A new model that can replace forums and user groups.
Will Glam media take Ning to the next level?
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