Survivor Network News
Sent this message to all members today, but wanted to post it here as well, so everyone would see it!
Pardon the interruption, but as much as I have never planned to use this broadcast message capability within Ning, I wanted everyone to be aware of what’s going on.
As some of you might have seen today, Ning has announced that they will no longer be offering the free service for social networks, which the Survivor Network has been using. (see http://news.cnet.com/8301-13577_3-20002611-36.html)
As the creator of the network, I’ve got quite a few things to consider before making a decision about what to do with this network. I can tell you that it’s unlikely I’ll be continuing it with the paid version, as I am already incurring costs for my website domain and hosting. Adding another expense on top of that might not make much sense.
Off the top of my head, I could simply ask you all to join the Facebook Fan page instead, creating a community there, but I also know that some survivors are reluctant to connect their “real” identities with a survivor group, for a variety of reasons. I tried, with the use of Ning, to offer them a place to go and still remain as anonymous as they need to be, but that option is now disappearing, so I’m going to spend some time checking in to other options and see what will work best, both for the members here, and for my own availability to build something!
Whatever I decide, I’ll be sure to send out another alert to all of you to let you know, and I’ll do it before this network disappears!
Thanks for your support, and here’s hoping we’ll be able to keep this community going, somewhere!
Mike
Mike, as I said earlier today on Twitter, you have some difficult decisions to make. You have my full support with whatever you choose to do. I have no problem with my anonymity but I know some do. I appreciate all of the time and energy that you put into the Child Abuse Survivor Network.
Hi Mike,
If you don’t mind me asking, how much is the paid version of Ning? I had a look on their website but couldn’t find anything. I’d be happy to donate towards continuing your network.
Stupid Ning, they should’ve charged from the start, then they’d have had more revenue coming in to not pull out the rug from everyone at the same time…
Let us know what the fees are and with 400 members we’ll see who wants to support it and who doesn’t. My fees for membership at my other site are due at the end of the month as well and that renewal is on hold for other reasons. Happy to support this depending on how much you need, and if it’s a paid-for service, traffic should increase as users wish to get more for their money.
Thanks all for the offers to help. I do appreciate that, but since they haven’t really announced anything about pricing models or anything else, I can’t really try to figure out whether that would be feasible or not. As of this moment, I’m leaning toward doing something here, hosting it alongside of this website. That might mean limiting the features a bit, since I obviously don’t have the same resources, but it would mean that everything would be right here, on my site, so no more worrying that a service will up and quit, or lose data, or anything else like that.
I’ve been doing some early experiments with doing just that, and I’m hoping to reach out to a handful of volunteers to test drive the new site, maybe within the next week or so. I’ll keep everyone posted!