Marc Andreessen on Ning

Marc Andreessen left a long comment on my recent post /Message: Playing Softball With Social Networking Insiders, which clarifies some comments I made, so I thought I would pull it up into a new post:

Hi Stowe -- I'm sorry to hear you're weary :-).

Here's what we've done:

* We started developing our hosted platform for social networks (which we called social applications at the time -- "social networks" is the term that the world has adopted so we've gone with it) in Oct 2004.

* In Oct 2005 we quietly released the initial version of the Ning platform with a couple of dozen simple social applications that any user could clone and customize in 30 seconds for free. The basics of the Ning platform were in place then -- any app could be customized at any level from HTML and Javascript down into underlying PHP against the Ning API's, or via Web services. But the applications were rudimentary, so we didn't publicize the service (no press release, no launch party, no conference speeches), we just let it virally grow and let people experiment with it while we continued to develop.

* In Oct 2006 we had evolved the underlying platform to the point where it was much more sophisticated and complete -- including a complete set of API's and Javascript/Ajax components for social networking features like friends, contacts, messaging, invitations, notifications, blocking, etc. -- and released three more robust applications (Photos, Videos, and Group). We did a small amount of press at that time and spoke at one conference (Web 2.0) where we also showed the designs for Ning version 2...

* This week we officially launched Ning version 2 and did our first actual press release and press tour (four days on the road). At this point with version 2 we are very happy with the underlying platform which is now an extremely robust and flexible way to build any kind of social network or application, and we are also very happy with our new front end, which is the "your own social network for anything" feature that you see when you go to the home page. All of the prior apps continue to work just like before but our focus with users is encouraging them to use the new social networking application and to use the resulting social networks.

This wasn't a three-month development effort... what we've built and released at this point has a ton of underlying API's and platform capabilities, plus front-end features, that simply take time to develop and bake.

We have, among other things: a scalable schema-less semi-structured content store that lets any application store, retrieve, and manipulate any kind of content or data on the fly (with more than 8 million individual data items currently in that store); complete automatic search and tagging of that data; autogenerated RSS and Atom feeds for all data; user authentication and profile management; all the social networking functionality I mentioned above as platform services; video transcoding and playback; photo processing and slideshows; mobile and email-based uploads of text/photos/video; and tons of other features -- all exposed through a unified REST-based web services API with PHP and Javascript API's layered on top; all supported by a secure embedded PHP runtime environment -- currently running 40,000 user-created social networks, well over 20 million monthly pageviews and 4 million monthly uniques, and growing very quickly. This is all *in addition* to the actual new social networking front-end application that we just developed and launched.

Marc - I will take another look. Regarding the "official relaunch" this week: I guess I thought the session at Web 2.0 Summit was that, but the technical glitches -- lack of web access -- stymied your first attempted presentation there -- and I didn't see the second. There is a story in here, somewhere, about about how much harder it is going to be to bring sophisticated social apps to market, but I guess it will have to wait till I take that second (third? fourth?) look at Ning.

tags: ning, marc+andreessen, social+applications, social+networks

Comments

[Clarence Wooten]

Quite a bit of Ning 2.0 resembles CollectiveX.com... including the "Create your own Network" call to action. Maybe this was in Marc's master plan all along... he's a smart guy... or maybe they took a very close look at CollectiveX and found religion. Regardless, the press that Ning is getting helps us all. I see Ning as a create your own MySpace. As you know, CollectiveX is more focused on existing professional groups and corporate workgroups -- i.e., a more professional alternative to Yahoo Groups.

[alan herrell - the head lemur]

Stowe,

Ning's technical elegance,with all the latest Ajaxy toys,(which is probably only really relevant to creators of these spaces) is still at the end of the day only the latest in Content Plantation Sharecropping Network Sweeptakes.
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2007/02/ning_the_latest.html

My complaint with all of these 'networks' is the assumption that the only way that we can participate is to grant them every subsidiary right:
"Subject to the next paragraph, if you add Code to a Network for which you have not added the Private Code premium service called “Protect Your Social Network” (i.e., Public Code), you grant Ning and other Users on the Ning Platform a worldwide, fully sub-licensable, fully paid-up and royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable license to use, reproduce, modify, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, and create derivative works of that Public Code (“Ning Public Code License”)."

Copyright has in itself no value, the subsidiary rights and the assignment is what makes them valuable. And every one of these sites require that we GIVE them Away? I don't think so.

They need us a hell of a lot more than we need them. They do not need these subsidary rights granted to them. Monetizing their network with ads surrounding our material, is at best a compromise of the sort that you will support something you don't like to get something that you do. At worst it is an electronic version of Prisoner's Dilemma. The only winner here is the Content Plantation Owner. The sharecroppers are still compelled to buy their staples at the Company Store. You notice that there are not any sharecropping farmers left?

Here is the view from the cheap seats on what they need vs what they assume they need. I am still hammering this out, but you get the idea.
http://theheadlemur.typepad.com/ravinglunacy/2007/02/ning_the_latest_1.html
If they want folks like me to play, this is the minimum contract that I will become a 'member'

"In exchange for my uploading materials to your site, you will receive a Limited, fully revocable, License to Display my materials on your network in the Original, forms as delivered to you, with full attribution to me as the author/copyright holder, for the duration of our engagement, being the period of time that we are entered into this arrangement, evidenced by my use of the username/password you have provided and the space on your network you have made available to me."

"All others rights are Reserved including, but not limited to, reproduction, modification, distribution outside of the aforementioned space, subsidary public display, public performance, and or derivative works in any format, online or offline."

The first site that adopts this language and model will be the one at the ed of the day that will gain the largest market.

[Marc Andreessen]

Hi Stowe -- thanks for posting my comments to your main blog -- much appreciated.

This may not be interesting to anyone but me anymore, but... at Web 2.0 we announced our Photos, Videos, and Group apps, and showed a preview (initial designs -- screen shots) of what we announced and rolled out last week. The first 30,000 social networks (or social apps, depending on your preferred terminology) on Ning were based on those simpler apps, and we learned a lot by watching how people used them.

We've now pulled it all together into a single user experience of "build your own social network for anything" and we will be focused on that user experience from an end user standpoint -- we'll be injecting lots of new features and new modules.

From our standpoint, phase 1 of our company was building out the underlying platform and simple apps on top (like Photos/Videos/Group); phase 2 is "build your own social network for anything" with the much more functional end user experience we are now offering. Phase 3 will be building out the end user feature set and ability to customize further while scaling up the back-end platform and giving developers even more power than they have today.

In the first week about 10,000 new social networks were created on Ning using our new front end -- so, so far, so good :-).

Thanks again for the comments!

[Marc Andreessen]

Hi Clarence -- to be honest we had not seen CollectiveX until we saw your blog posting -- it looks great!

[Marc Andreessen]

Hi alan -- I really appreciate your thoughts on the content license -- I am sure there are some users who will not use Ning due to the content license and that is certainly their right!

However, for many other users the license as crafted makes a lot of sense. Please bear in mind that any social network creator on Ning can opt out of us displaying advertising against their network for $19.95/month which we think is a pretty good deal considering all of the functionality you get :-).

One of the major reasons our license is crafted the way it is actually has nothing to do with advertising. It is this: built into Ning is the ability for one social network on the platform to easily draw on and use so-called "public content" from any other social network. If you look at the developer documentation you will see how easy this is -- it's really simple, and powerful. We do this to encourage maximum information sharing and openness. You also have the option, of course, to keep content private, and disable that information sharing. But we encourage people to share -- and the license is specifically crafted to encourage that sharing.

It was a long exercise with some excellent lawyers who were also involved with crafting the Creative Commons licenses to get to the point where we're at now, which we're happy with, but we'll continue to take input and see what we can do to improve it!

Please feel free to send any thoughts to ceo at our company name dot com at any time.

[Marc Andreessen]

One addendum to the last comment -- and I promise, last comment of the day! --

I forgot to mention that we encourage sharing of both content and code (the code = the PHP and/or Javascript that defines the front end experience, against the back end web services API's that we provide).

On the code side:

We provide all of our HTML and Javascript for users to customize/modify/change however they see fit, and we also provide for users to be able to build new social applications from scratch.

We encourage users to contribute their PHP/Javascript code -- either modified from ours, modified from someone else's, or written from scratch -- into the community for others to use and learn from.

You can also opt out of sharing your code -- in essence, take it dark -- for a small monthly fee ($7.95/month).

You may reasonably say, what am I getting for my $7.95/month to keep my code private -- or my $19.95/month to not have Ning run ads. You're getting a completely hosted, completely customizable/programmable, pre-built online environment in which your social network runs without you having to build 95%+ of the features, worry about databases, operations, security, etc.

So basically -- the overall service is free as long as we can run ads. That includes the ability to completely customize and program whatever you want. If you want to run your own ads, or just take our ads off, it converts to a $19.95/month service. Similarly, you can use any code you see on the system and do anything you want with it for free, as long as you contribute any of your own changes/code back into the community. If you want to take your code dark and not share it, it coverts to a $7.95/month service.

Which we think is not such a bad deal :-).

[alan herrell - the head lemur]

Marc,
Thank for your response. Before I bring out the Torches and Pitchforks, I would like to thank you for the original Netscape, and your profound effect on everybody on the planet.

Torches and Pitchforks Section

I have no problem with your business of posting advertising against free network content. This is a simple money for stuff transaction. As I mentioned, you do currently have the coolest platform....this week.

However.....
Your license, whether it was a major billable event involving actual practicing attorneys who actually wrestled with this issue or a cut and paste by interns who moved it up the value chain and deposited billables against it, is not germane nor does address my concerns. If you mention this as a validation to your business partners that all that money for lawyers was not money down a rathole, fine, but is still not germane.

As evidence that you may want to check your lawyer billings, here are some Terms of Service from other network platforms:

Yours:
""Ning Platform a worldwide, fully sub-licensable, fully paid-up and royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable license to use, reproduce, modify, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, and create derivative works"

You Tube:
"..you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works"

Flickr:
"..Yahoo! Groups, the perpetual, irrevocable and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed."

My Space:
"..you hereby grant to MySpace.com a limited license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute.."
MySpace actually has a much better explanation and acknowledgment of their dependency upon Individually Created Expressions.

Your clickwrap license is still overreaching is what is actually needed for your network to flourish, and my copyrights to be reserved.
Your justification :
"It is this: built into Ning is the ability for one social network on the platform to easily draw on and use so-called "public content" from any other social network."
Yeah, this is a lot easier than building a script for producing splogger networks, and gives you first mover in the ad revenue business model.

Let me take a moment to explain where my vision differs from yours.

You say that you get a:
""a worldwide, fully sub-licensable, fully paid-up and royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable license to use, reproduce, modify, distribute, publicly display, publicly perform, and create derivative works""

I say:

"In exchange for my uploading materials to your site, you will receive a Limited, fully revocable, License to Display my materials on your network in the Original, forms as delivered to you, with full attribution to me as the author/copyright holder, for the duration of our engagement, being the period of time that we are entered into this arrangement, evidenced by my use of the username/password you have provided and the space on your network you have made available to me."

"All others rights are Reserved including, but not limited to, reproduction, modification, distribution outside of the aforementioned space, subsidary public display, public performance, and or derivative works in any format, online or offline."

I particularily emphasise the Limited nature of my grant for a couple of reasons. The first being the reuse of my material on another social network in the Ning space as an invitation to content scrapers, and the silly idea that I would like to meet who I am sharing with. Your having the right to package my stuff into a bargain CD, "Wet and Wild Ningers" not that you would personally, but if this deal goes south, the pressure to repackage will be heavy.

The attribution thing can be done in RSS, to retain my copyright, which is still mine by authorship, although your service is doing everything in its power to assign All subsidiary Rights to You. This sort of thing is why musicians, actors and artists die broke.

I have already acknowledged that you have to make money in order to continue to offer the service. However, Fully Sublicensable? If I wanted my materials to be somewhere else, my demonstration of participation in your network should be an indication that I am able to do so on my own hind legs.

I sure as hell am not granting you the the right to "create derivative works" My stuff not good enough? You can't ask?

I have not tried to tell you that your business is doomed for failure, or that you are a few pixels short of an image, but I am saying that what you want is far more than I am willing to grant you. It is still early in the life of social networking, and the number of people who are not aware of what you are asking in grants is not an equitable arrangement, which is something I personally feel is a disservice to any participant on any network, including Yours.

I have also offered an alternative that I feel is fair, as you need contributions more than we need another social network.

As for the 19.95 commercial, stop sounding like Ron Popeil. I can password protect a Wordpress Blog if I want a private social network. That cost is Zero.

[Rose]

My complaint with them is their terms that allow users to create derivative works from other users content.

[DON S]

To All ...

I am still in search of a social networking solution that can fit my specific needs. They are ALMOST there. I can code, but I don't want to! I have a site already that I maintain in LAMP but I want to concentrate more time on the content and membership and less on the underpinnings. Hence my quest for a better solution. I am in QUICK LOOK mode so forgive me if I missed something in NING or Collectivex...I am taking the quick first past.

I like Ning a lot...the UI is nicely done. But...Many communities struggle with web based participation versus email participation. Ning has some of this connect, but as far as I can tell no DIGEST mode like Collectivex has. How about feeds to Facebook & RSS for Forum Discussions (see vBulletin Facebook Integration). Are there RSS feeds there anywhere or did I miss it? How about emailing into either one to post discussions...I see sending in a pic from mobile and that is good but what about just emailing in a post or replying to a post with email? I am wishing I had the best of Google Groups, Ning and Collective X all together.

Thanks!