For those of you not closely following the drama between social network platform Ning and a popular widget provider called WidgetLaboratory, you can read the background here. On Friday Ning unceremoniously shut down their access to Ning, making all those widgets vanish.
WidgetLaboratory cried foul, saying they’d done nothing wrong, that the ban was “completely without any notice,” and that “it would appear that [Ning] decided to elminate WidgetLaboratory for anti-competitive purposes alone.” Ning was silent in response, citing a “longstanding policy against publicly discussing third party widgets and applications as well as the details of Terms of Service violations.”
Ning remains silent on the reasons for banning WidgetLaboratory, but the whole story is coming out anyway. WidgeLaboratory has posted a number of emails back and forth between the two companies in support of its case (in the event the emails are taken down, we’ve grabbed a copy here). But the emails show just the opposite – that Ning was concerned over the fact that WL was gathering credentials from users and otherwise creating havoc on Ning networks. It was clear that Ning wasn’t happy with WL, was working with them to resolve the problems, and made it clear that if the problems were not resolved WL would be removed from the platform.
In an email to WL on August 2 (more than three weeks ago), CEO Gina Bianchini wrote “Our only goal is to have you build your products in such a way that doesn’t slow down the networks running your products or takedown the Ning Platform with what you’re doing. Both of those would result in us needing to shutdown WidgetLaboratory products and that’s has never been our first choice of options. Hopefully, you know this after 8 months of working with us.”
In another email to WL on August 7, Bianchini wrote “If we have evidence other than our conversation last night that you are asking for username, password, and pin of other Network Creators on WidgetLaboratory, we will be put in the unfortunate situation of shutting down your network and widgets. We don’t want to do this. In fact, we’d like very much to work more closely together but we can only do so if everything you guys are doing is within the Terms of Service.”
The emails taken as a whole show a pattern of emotional rants by WL, followed by reasoned responses by Ning. Frankly, if I was Ning I would have banned then a long time ago based on the harvesting of user credentials alone.
Based on their own evidence WidgetLaboratory flat out lied in their initial communications around the ban to gather sympathy, and then used the situation to get further attention from the community. These guys are idiots.
Let me help Mr. Arrington with disclosure.
Marc Andreessen co-founder of Ning is on the panel of experts for his upcoming TechCrunch conference.
http://www.tech...nel-of-experts/
C’mon, Mike you need to disclose this is you are going to bash WL.
we disclose (the very rare) financial conflicts of interest when they occur. Someone agreeing to come to our conference and judge companies for 2 hours just ain’t a conflict. I’d say that every post I write has some sort of friend conflict in it, as does everything else everyone else writes. Marc occasionally responds to my emails and he once waved at me at a restaurant, but I wouldn’t even come close to putting us in the “friend” category – which means that this post has less bias in it than most of what I write. read what you want on this blog and others, form your own opinions, and shut the hell up.
Hey Mike,
Did someone hit a nerve?
nope. i just wanted to be clear. if you want to hit a nerve you’ve got to be more original than that.
Flickr
http://farm4.st...8ab9ed7d2_o.jpg
back at ya:
http://www.grea...bush-finger.jpg
That was good.
http://newmedia...tures/crack.jpg
all in good humor. Cheers.
I read the emails posted on WL blog and came to the same conclusion earlier today before reading this. Anyone that reads the emails will come to the same conclusions.
Ning…should be a product on AnythingNothing.com … would look great next to Nix and Nil
Also, when will TC start posting IP addresses of the people posting comments? So many of the inane replies to posters pointing out that Ning screwed themselves by hitting the nuclear button appear to be coming from Ning employees; nobody else has a personal interest in shooting down intelligent remarks.
Mike, I have to agree with the parent on the point that you should have disclosed your affiliation with Marc. TechCrunch is coming across as press releases from the Silicon Valley Young Boys’ Club these days. Simple disclosure can protect your credibility.
Techcrunch should consider taking a position on nings board ! Why did ning allow WL for so long to the point Gina was referring Ncs to WL if they had problems ! cmon !
Mike,
when you started reporting this topic couple of days back you guys were supporting widgetlab , and today morning its the Ning that got your mercy!
-
I just don’t get this Journalism at times lol
i think the emails kind of cleared everything up.
Well, maybe you should have done some fact checking before you put through the original and highly emotional posts. I know you want to deliver breaking news, but you need to be careful that you don’t end up posting one-sided gossip. Ethics have never been the highpoint of TC, but you should really work on your reporting practices.
it was one sided bc Ning refused to comment.
kinda unavoidable. Perhaps you’d be happier at another blog.
I read the email exchange that was posted yesterday and I reached the same conclusion, i.e., Ning was not the bad guy here. WL played their card of “we have all the users and we can do what the heck we want to do and you better work with us” and Ning eventually told them to get the heck out of their network. Spencer bluffed and lost. The Ning and WL users were the only ones who lost here.
I’m glad TC actually took the time to read the email correspondence and corrected their stance over this matter.
That’s nuts – the only thing WL did was develop cool products that people liked. Remember they were using Ning’s API, and features that Ning supports for every Network Creator. Given the popularity of WL, Ning could have:
1) easily asked them to submit any new widgets for testing and review prior to publishing them.
2) tested them on beta servers prior to rolling out network upgrades.
3) given them guidance on best practices to avoid performance degradations.
4) required certain widgets be removed if they saw affects on network degradation.
5) not ban their personal sites as well.
etc.
Note from the emails shown, that Gina and crew never said STOP doing X with the sole exception of asking for usernames and password to help fix problems. That was clearly NOT the reason they were terminated. As such, it really seems to me Ning was wrong here, and I think you failed to capture the important issues around supporting a platform – which requires more than simply punting because you don’t like someone’s tone.
i look at this issue of simply more confirmation of my opinion that alot of the web 2.0 fluff… is just that, fluff!!’
you’ve got people “running” companies, who clearly aren’t up to the task.
so, to all the guys who bitched at ning on this, like i said, when someone screams, be sure you get both (all) sides of a story before you take sides!!
and again, i ask, just how would ning be hurt by WL releasing any of their code as open source!!
peace
ps. mike, everyday, i’m less impressed by the aggregate intel quotient of your readers…
As I said on the previous thread here, I’m still amazed that AUP/ToS have come to be understood as a “three strikes” rule. No. When violated, *poof*. Violated. Past tense.
Good on NING for nipping it in the bud.
Mr. Arrington, I think you might be going a little overboard in your castigation of WidgetLabs. Mr. Forman at WidgetLaboratory is having his business yanked out from under him, of course he’s going to be emotional. I say that anyone with the talent to build something like WidgetLaboratory up so quickly is going to be successful in another arena soon if they want to keep at it.
I’ve just written up what I hope is a less inflammatory review of the Ning / WidgetLaboratory debacle at my own blog.
By the way, I appreciate TechCrunch and your dogged persistence on this story. Just don’t toss Mr. Forman into the fire just yet please!
I don’t know if self-linking is frowned on around these parts, but since my writeup is so closely related I’ll toss it in: http://www.shar...-air-nings.html
Thanks for your consideration and keep up the good investigation TC!
my criticism is based on what he was writing before the ban occurred.
Fair enough, I certainly felt that Mr. Forman was being excessively confrontational in the emails and not completely forthcoming with his initial press on the matter, but the open sourcing of the widgets and subsequent release of the hopefully comprehensive email corpus goes a long way towards redeeming him in my book.
That said, the folks at Ning certainly come out of this looking more levelheaded than does Mr. Forman.
I read through the documents and I would still somewhat agree that the removal came out of “nowhere” because it seemed like the sides had reached an amicable resolution to work together. The resolution was not without reservations on both sides (the reservations for Ning, as you mentioned, were network performance and asking for credentials to provide tech support), however it still seems to me that it was hasty for Ning to remove WL with one terse email after reaching an amicable resolution two weeks earlier.
yeah, I’m sort of wondering why there’s no correspondence shown for the couple of weeks right before the ban. If I was betting I’d say there are emails that weren’t published. But even if there aren’t it’s pretty clear they weren’t at any sort of resolution of the issues.
Oh Mikey,
The nerve has been hit big time; and don’t go around betting ’cause you’ll lose. By the way, I didn’t see Kincaid going around defending his post…
betting? huh? try harder.
I’m pasting what I said earlier…
“When did multiple violations of ToS become some kind of expected right where everyone pats each other on the back, singing songs, drinking beers, and saying it’s all good — and then only after the most flagrant (who decides) is there action metered out?
Violated. Past tense.
How long has WL developed such a long running and amazing track record of value to the users of NING? Is this in months? years?
Flip this to be if NING did not respond to a ToS viloation… how does that change the argument?”
agree
It’s because network degradation is a completely arbitrary ToS violation. Further, even when a 3rd party does commit a ToS violation, the real story often plays out around how the violation is handled. Handing out the death penalty for every ToS violation without notice would be considered extreme and harmful to even the platform owner (I’m not saying this is what Ning is doing)
So for those two reasons the issue is not as black and white as you paint it to be.
Sameer — I simply do not agree.
1) What you call arbitrary, frankly, does not have any correlation to what NING’s internal operations department would be able to discern. NING is a platform that is only as viable as its ability be available and operating within tolerances. Now, if you have something to support that NING performance metrics are arbitrary, please feel free to post those references.
2) The damaging story would be if NING did _not_ do something in response to a ToS violation. Some would boil this down to a cliche such as “give an inch, they take a yard”. If you take the approach of looking the other way on a ToS violation — why would anyone want to associate with your platform? Again, if you have references showing where violation of ToS improved the ecosystem of a service allowing it to flourish in a manner aligned with stated company vision and investor guidance, feel free to post them.
Jay, the part that is arbitrary is the determination of what type of performance degradation is not acceptable. While I don’t know the details of Ning’s platform, its probably safe to say that all of the 3rd party apps for Ning have a negative effect on performance (to one degree or another).
So, its absolutely unclear what type of metric Ning has set to determine WL’s performance degradation was unacceptable. I am not saying Ning set the bar artificially high or that they are lying, but I am saying this is not a clear cut ToS violation. Anytime a term is not precisely defined (such as in this case) there is room for discussion. Once again, it is not as black and white as you claim.
And nobody is asking Ning to look the other way to ToS violations. They definitely have the right and need to resolve any such violations. The issue being discussed in this post and the previous posts is whether a) there really was a ToS violation b) whether Ning handled the ToS violation appropriately (as there are many possible ways to punish/resolve a ToS violation) or if there was some other solution that could have resolved the ToS issues without a death penalty.
Keep in mind that I am not debating the legal merits here. Legally Ning seems to be on very solid footing. But sometimes its not just about the legal aspect.
“Legally Ning seems to be on very solid footing.”
I would hope so. It is their ToS. It is their platform.
As for the metric… oh, where to start. You say there are many ways to handle a ToS violation. I say “off”. Or, if you prefer, “air gap”.
It is their platform. A violated ToS is not a prelude to debate.
The discussion ends abruptly right there.
Here is the actual black and white: Don’t like it? Start your own platform up and/or go elsewhere.
Jay, if platforms took the approach you are calling for, there would not be many third parties willing to develop on those platforms. Yes, a violated ToS is a prelude to discussion many many times. There are times when the seriousness of a ToS violation warrants an abrupt death penalty. But most of the time ToS violations by 3rd party developers are unintentional. Therefore, it would be in the best interests of the platform owner to open a discussion with the violater to resolve those issues. You seem to be pushing for an immediate death penalty for every and any ToS violation. That just doesn’t make good business sense.
And “Don’t like it? Start your own platform up and/or go elsewhere.” That also doesn’t make good business sense. If 3rd party developers start to believe that you arbitarily ban 3rd parties for the slightest of unintentional ToS violations (without first offering a fair opportunity to fix the violation, then there won’t be many 3rd parties willing to develop for your platform.
The above scenario does not necessarily map to the Ning situation, however, its pretty certain that there are less people out there considering developing for Ning then there were 3 days ago.
Sameer – I would hope that anyone developing for a hosted platform (SaaS) that _someone else_ owns, controls, and will protect reflects long and hard on considering where to apply time, energy, and capital.
As for good business sense, going into such an endeavor without fully realizing and planning for being shut down is, well, rather short sighted.
As for less people considering developing for NING…. well, that might not be a bad thing until NING determines a way to monetize and compartmentalize those developing bodies to mitigate the risks taken on by the network as a whole that would manifest as a ToS violation.
Very mature infrastructure services are often relegated to virtual hosting models that have been hammered out over many years of failure, contention, and innovation. Of course, analogies are dangerous but my point is that NING has to protect itself no matter what third party is impacted.
Jay, the main theme behind a platform and its 3rd party developers has to be cooperation and it works both ways. Theres always risks for a 3rd party developing on a platform, but development is done with the assumption that as long as you try to stay within the rules, the counterparty will act reasonable with you.
But in this case, WL is accusing Ning of things way beyond reasonable. It’s hard to say if its true or not that Ning was unreasonable, but I feel from your comments that you are saying Ning is right to do as they wish regardless of how “unreasonable” or “harsh” it may be just because Ning has the legal right to do so.
I’m sure Ning even has the right to dismiss WL without a ToS violation even having been commited. Yet, it wouldn’t make it right.
And yes of course, before developing for a platform one must consider if one believe the platform owners to be a reasonable group who are willing to cooperate and not capriciously ban you. Thats why I believe, there will be a lot of developers, who will take this incident and come to the conclusion that they can not be certain that Ning can be trusted. So even if, as you said, Ning is not yet ready for a surge of 3rd party developers, this incident will come back to bite them when it is ready. Ning has definitely not come out looking good here, whether to its own users or prospective developers.
Sameer, your point is excellent. WL will certainly suffer because of this situation, but it is also true for Ning.
Now, WL cannot have it both ways — Was it “unreasonable” or “harsh” for Ning to drop WL after several warnings were ignored?
What would you do, truly, when faced with this situation? Look the other way, pretending that nothng is happening?
Sameer — yes, of course, all parties suffer. I didn’t mean to make it sound like this does not produce damage on both sides.
However, first and foremost you have to take into account the operational expense incurred by the platform provider to review, conclude, and meter out actions in the wake of the ToS violation. ToS violations are disruptive to the operating margins of platform provider.
WL might be up the creek completely (perish the thought) but I am quite sure NING could have been doing other much more profitable things than working issues related to the ToS violation and the wake of what the action requires.
Any distraction related to the policing of a ToS has a cost. Anyone that says different is delusional.
Or, as another platform provider (now defunct heh!) said: Abuse clearing houses are a cost center and should be avoided at all cost.
So, if you take your eye off the ball with how your platform is treated, you wake up wondering where the core audience went when some third party either ruins it or invites a pattern of behavior that alienates the core audience though deleterious service impact.
I liked Gina’s plaintive cry of ‘why are you reading conspiracies into everything we do?’.
It does seem to be the order of the day from developers (for Apple, for Ning etc) who read all kinds of things into silence or no reply.
99.99% of the time, the truth is that a) what you’re asking isn’t that important to the big company and b) they’re just super busy. [We would all be lucky to be that busy!
]
The developers who win in these situations are the ones who don’t moan and just get their heads down and work through the difficulty of working with a big company.
Have a good Sunday everyone.
I admit that it’s easy to get caught up in rooting for the little guy against the big faceless corporation, but I imagine Ning is run by real people too.
Best to just stick with Occam’s Razor when your provider unwittingly impacts your service rather than looking for a conspiracy.
This has been a good story though, however it ends.
I think they unfortunately hurt themselves more by not saying anything though / no warning to the folks who paid for those widgets and relied on them and crashed some of the groups. I was reading through their message board and users are pisssseeeddddd……..
A name “Evil Genius” and “Mick” should have given everyone a clue what tools these WidgetLaboratory guys really are.
What a bunch of idiots.
I hope all OpenSocial providers ban these a-holes.
Welp, it reads to me like “douchebags all around.” WL are a bunch of pimply code monkeys and Ning has weak technology. Everybody wants to keep their slice of the pie. Hilarity ensues.
As for tone and whatnot, as we all learned from “Knocked Up,” just because you don’t yell doesn’t mean you’re not mean. There is a certain paternalism in Gina and Mr. G’s replies that seems to mask a fact of technical capabilities of the Ning platform as well as Spence’s unprofessionalism possibly hiding skr1ptard coding habits. That is, which came first, weak platform or shitty programming? I’m pretty sure this is the crux of the drama.
The credentials thing is weird and I don’t know enough about the day-to-day issues of supporting users as a 3rd party developer. There’s a little too much “everybody does it” in WL’s rationale for me to be entirely comfortable with it aside from the whole “asking people for their password” retardedness. Seriously, if you need to ask people for their password, DOING IT WRONG.
strongly agree
While WL is a little snipey in their emails, it still reads like Ning screwed them and they did even get a kiss.
Tons of services violate ToS and harvest credentials yet they don’t get shut down. Ning are just frustrated that they’ve allowed WidgetLaboratory to parasite on their own success.
If I was a Ning network owner, I would clearly look into alternatives like the open source Insoshi or LovdByLess as I wouldn’t like my network being in the hands of Ning that seems so immature in handling basic issues like this!
I clearly don’t see the urgency of shutting WidgetLaboratory down like that and breaking so many networks without any notice.
I would also recommend Elgg. Their user interface is not as friendly as Insoshi or LovdByLess, but the new version has an interesting architecture, registration supports OpenID, and the creators seem to be thought leaders with the creation of OpenDD as a data portability standard across social networks.
Yes, we all hate Ning ID – the last thing one wants is “yet another ID”!
thx 4 d thumbs up on insoshi and lovedbyless !
I think ning really was pissed off at WL making so much money all this crap talk isa waste of our time ! Ning’s immature decision will knock us all out ! The WL competition like scripts4ning n webchattr and jooqfone are all ass kissers who compared to WL scriptiung could not holda candle to their code ! all d nutballs talking abt the mails bw WL n ning clearly shows that ning really really did not give any exact details as to what was going on ! cmon Wlabs has been on ning for 8mths and we have CEO ning gina referreing nings network creators most of the time to WLAbs ! i think she does not deserve to be a CEO of any company talkless of ning ! all that blah blah abt TOS is crap bcos no body really knows what u can and cant do .Right now all the NCs are afraid to even spaek against Ning because Ning can and might ban them off ! They got us scared ! very bad ! for a service we are paying for !
Understanding the importance of the integrity of a host platform is hardly paying lip-service to Ning’s tush. It incentivizes developers to write more defensive, performance-minded code, and that my friend … is software-engineering 101.
WL’s been very prolific, rolling-out insanely useful features in a very short amount of time, getting widespread adoption near-instantly from an eager flock of enterprising Network Creators. WL understood their needs and delivered on them … fast. While an impressive effort, this rapid pace would present serious reliability challenges to the most outstanding engineering teams in the field, even more so to a bootstrapped company of a couple of scripters. Dynamics become even more precarious when you start charging Network Creators for scripts you offer that run on a hosted platform such as Ning, and such scripts start to bring-down the host platform.
webChattr’s been my pet project, and while I’ve been approached with numerous suggestions as to which features i could and “absolutely should” add to it, as well as other social network components I “absolutely should” develop, i know my limitations … cold. And strive to deliver something reliable. It’s been a rocky road to say the least, but it’s getting there as evidenced by a look at webchattr.com’s traffic chart on quantcast.com . The business model behind wC is slightly different from WL’s of course, and it reaches far beyond Ning.
I too read the whole e-mail thread that Spence posted on his blog. He points out himself that Ning called his guy at 4am to fix a bug in WL’s code that was causing hundreds of Networks to crash … hard.
While WL clamors they were able to fix the issue within 2 minutes, the real issue here, is that Ning engineers were up until 4am at the Ning offices trying to find out why hundreds of Network Creators were complaining all day that their Network was down, until they finally tracked it down to a small, yet dramatically-impacting issue in WL’s code. In this process, Ning lost man-hours and money, as did many Network Creators. And it’s because of situations like these that basic Terms of Service reserve the right for a host company to do whatever it feels it needs to do, at its sole discretion.
I wonder what Canter’s take on this is? He has a real knack for getting to the heart of the business’ shady dealings. However, credentials harvesting or abuse is very serious. There are so many cross site security issues in the age of the widget, that this is probably just the first of many such blow-ups that we shall see published around the net.
having worked on the Ning platform, i can almost guarantee that the WL apps degraded the Ning service, as a consequence of both bad widget development, and bad Ning development. while very functional on the front-end, for anyone who’s ever looked at the Ning code can testify, it has so many inconsistencies. it’s obvious that their modules are written by individual teams of developers at Ning in little silos that do not communicate with each other – things that should be implemented in a common way are unique to each module. not fun work when you’re trying to customize Ning in any way, as you have to create a custom solution for each instance, though it should be common.
as for the “harvesting of user credentials,” the issue above creates this situation. only developers with a lot of experience on the Ning platform are able to implement many of these custom features. so NC’s without technical expertise NEED the assistance of the developers, and they in turn need the NC “user credentials” to be able to implement these features.
this creates a very vicious circle.
we’ve never used the WL apps, but i can sympathize in some ways. unfortunate that the two parties couldn’t find a more reasonable way to find common ground.
I have to agree that the Ning codebase is a right royal mess (in hindsight, Dojo may have been a bad choice) and what it spits out to the page is even worse. While Ning may have done many things right (they must have otherwise I would not have chosen them to build three communities).
As for affecting WL negatively affecting performance. Ever measure the difference in Ning page load times with and without Google Analytics? Or AdWords? Or even some of Ning’s own features – the RSS feed module and the display of member avatars are very slow. And what about hacking in all the “advanced” code into the bottom of the page – where it gets evaluated after everything else? This is even true for the sorry hack they offer to add tabs and pages. The navigation updates (redraws and rearranges) only after the rest of the page loads and gets evaluated. Even something as simple as changing the color in a CSS font class – with about a million nested divs on a page – finding out exactly what CSS element to override can be a nightmare.
These aspects of the Ning platform do create a vicious cycle when the code of third parties is thrown into the mix.
Learn to use Firebug if you can’t find the CSS element to override. And don’t overuse the footer analytics hack. You can actually employ third-party JavaScript libraries and a wealth of PHP code if you study the platform. I even demonstrated how to replace the captcha on a form and Flash Video Player on my Ning site.
Since when does Ning penalize creative minds?
this is a problem with running your business in someone elses house. You must obey the rules or be asked to leave end off.
Maybe they should of started with publishing the emails and being up front.
Although I tend to side with WidgetLaboratories on this one, for numerous reasons, I think it should have been quite obvious what Ning’s plans were. By ferreting up the communication to general counsel, and principles of the company, they were preparing themselves to do precisely what they did- cut WL off.
Although there are probably a number of technical issues that would justify their actions, especially with an overly subjective TOS, the chain of events seems to prove that it was quite premeditated…probably due to a personal animus that was referenced on multiple occasions by Ning themselves. Are we reading two different chains of emails, Michael?
I also don’t understand where you are seeing evidence that the ban was due to WL’s policies of “harvesting” information. The responses from the lawyer seem to state emphatically that the move was precipitated by performance issues caused by WL.
As well, the insulting responses made by the general counsel prove the existence of the aforementioned personal animus. Responses such as his are extremely poor form for an attorney, and speak to the quality of their general counsel. One of an attorney’s paramount duties is to resolve disputes, not fester them or create more.
Ning’s emails are just as emotionally charged as WLs, which leads me to agree with the prior commenter that there might be some kind of personal interest or affiliation between yourself and Ning. Maybe a plea from Ning’s representative, since I assume you are on first name terms?
I just don’t see the open and shut case that you are purporting exists, and vilifying a company with a lower standard is not just irresponsible, but possibly actionable.
Where am I wrong here?
Three important points:
1) Ning’s corporate counsel notified us that the reason for our removal was SOLELY due to “degrading” the Network. We were not alleged to have been removed for anything to do with our explained need (as a software provider) to support customer requests for hands-on product installation or setup. Gina’s allusions to TOS violations were directly addressed in our reply letter wherein we indicated that our counsel reviewed Ning’s published TOS and could find no instance where our use of customer login information (upon customer’s own request, not our solicitation) constituted a breach or violation;
2) We have an eight month track record with Ning that is further substantiated by emails, phone logs, and personal meetings. All of these demonstrating that WidgetLaboratory approached Ning in a passive and benevolent manner and sought Ning’s “blessing” to create our products on their platform. Our “evidence” will show that we have had months of time to work with Ning’s entire development staff and Executive staff in an effort to conform and abide by Ning’s architecture and culture. It is worthy to note that this “relationship” was never hindered by our ability to product functional and efficient software. Rather, if anything, it met with a very “unique” response and manner of handling our mutual customers that ranged from ambivalence, to finger-pointing, to outright aggression directed at WidgetLaboratory. We felt that releasing a fraction of the total record was important at this stage to let people understand that the SOLE BASIS for Ning’s termination of our company was for alleged “degrading” of their Network… we are happy to share the rest of the complete record with anyone who cares to view the same;
3) What about the Customers? Even if one wishes to claim that it is one or two or three strikes and you are out… we have a long-standing deference to anything and everything that Ning has asked us to do. We even reminded Gina in our last email that we will bow when she says bow, and jump when she says jump… because we want to. There has been no mention by Mr. Arrington as to WHY Ning chose to completely UNPLUG thousands of their prime customers and their personal and professional networks RATHER than simply doing as they have done again and again..which is to notify us that a particular product or network has been causing a high “load” or issue and that this needs to be voluntarily removed until it is either fixed or a new solution is created.
This method of working “together” for the good of the CUSTOMERS had been practiced between our two companies for eight or more months with no problems other than the usual growing pains of relationships between corporate cultures.
The last phone call we received before the termination was from Jay Parekh (EVP Engineering at Ning) to Mick Balaban (CTO of WL), wherein Jay foreshadowed the fact that Ning’s own “update” had caused a number of major difficulties. In particular, a site called “EveryonesApostolitic” had thrown off 20,000 data objects for no known reason. Jay asked us whether we had recently provided them any new widgets, to which we replied “NO”, as the only thing they had recently installed was many days or more earlier and was a “personal meeting” widget that had zero network effect. Jay did not inform us at that time that we needed to remove anything, did not inform Mick that we were in violation of any TOS, and in general, was just calling to tell Mick that Ning (once again) had no idea why their largest customer was causing an issue. In multiple instance such as this in the past, Ning has raised the “red alert” to WidgetLaboratory only to later admit to us and our customers that the problem was, in fact, NING’S ARCHITECTURE and nothing to do with our products.
We are an open book. We welcome any constructive conversation or discussion of facts and details. Our focus has always been, and will remain, on the fact that Ning has laid waste to an entire network of customers and attempted to destroy our business and reputation without any justifiable cause, and without any consideration of the incidental and consequential damages.
We will continue to stand-up for the facts and the truth of this matter and suggest that attention should be directed to Ning and their technical staff with inquires into a) What is the result now that WL has been completely stripped from Ning. We suggest that time will demonstrate Ning’s ARCHITECTURE to be similarly plagued by “whatever” issues they claim were the basis for eliminating WidgetLaboratory and b) That it will be interesting to see how Ning’s somewhat “miraculous” introduction of clone products (after a year or more of claiming it was not on their “roadmap”) will do on their own network without having a scapegoat such as WidgetLaboratory to blame?
Thank you for your consideration
Spencer Forman
CEO-Co Founder
WidgetLaboratory
Hi Spencer,
Were there any emails dated Aug 8 to Aug 21 between the two companies? It seems like a large gap.
Also, I would not characterize your relationship with Ning as “passive and benevolent” since the emails do show the relationship did become a bit heated at times.
The part that is the most headscratching is the widely different accounts of the very critical call between Jay and Mike the night before the removal.
I think posting emails/IMs between Jay and Mike would go a long way in proving your case.
*Sorry if this comment gets posted twice. I submitted it but it didn’t show up the first time*
Hi Sameer,
1) There were no emails between Gina and myself relating to this topic between August 8th and August 21st. The “gap” to which you refer is the major reason why we believe that Ning’s motives were punitive and anti-competitive. The last we heard from her was that we would be contacted by their new VP of business development, etc… nothing more of consequence until Jay Parehk contacted Mick Balaban;
2) When Jay contacted Mick, this was done late at night, via call to Mick’s cell phone. Jay’s tone was immediately accusatory, which then switched to apologetic, and then ended in conciliatory. He suggested that Ning’s recent updates were causing “his team” to be overburdened and was hoping that WidgetLaboratory might have some clue as to why that one customer was throwing off so many data objects. It was when Mick spoke directly to him and indicated that we have nothing to do with it that his tone and demeanor changed, and he then quietly backed away from the topic.
It would be helpful if that interchange was in writing, but it was not.
Thank you
The whole thing has turned ugly and TechCrunch’s flip-flopping has made it even worst. Oh boy…
TC hasn’t flopped on this, the initial articles were written by J. Kincaid on a weekday and the followup was written by founder M. Arrington on a Sunday.
It’s understandable that Arrington would have a different perspective on this than did Kincaid, especially in light of the e-mails.
I hope we aren’t expecting TC to stay “on message” regardless of who’s writing or what the latest developments are. That would be a disservice to us all.
mike is right. after reading through all of the available emails, it is obvious that this spencer guy got too big for his britches…and ning pulled his punk card.
Home Biss: “The whole thing has turned ugly and TechCrunch’s flip-flopping has made it even worst.”
Actually, TechCrunch coming out with a further clarification on the issue, and fairly showing Ning’s side of the issue was one of the better aspects of the affair. This post was a good thing, because it provided missing details before people worked themselves up into an ill-informed rant.
So, Spencer and the “pimply codemonkeys” were caught with their hands in the cookie jar, were warned several times, but they ignored the master…
Spencer, you and your accomplices at WL need to grow up, stop whining and face the consequences of what you guys have been doing.
“What about the customers?” — Again, you have to share the bulk of the responsibility.
“Ning’s somewhat “miraculous” introduction of clone products” — Yeah! now you are claiming ownership [and rights] to widgets? — Wake up man: Ning owns its store; they can create whatever they want.
John
Is there some confusion over credentials harvesting? It sure sounds like WL was only requesting access from network admins, not end users.
I have worked for the developers of a large virtualization app and we routinely asked for a client’s credentials to troubleshoot bugs that could not be replicated in our test environment. I imagine this is how QA and support for hundreds of other applications is done, pretty run of the mill. If it’s voluntarily given up, it seems pretty harmless.
“Is there some confusion over credentials harvesting? It sure sounds like WL was only requesting access from network admins, not end users.”
I haven’t used their stuff, but did look into it. One reason I didnt was their offering of the “Login Box” widget: a replacement for Ning’s normal login dialog box… To me that screams phishing: “Here, use OUR login box, we will just pass it to Ning the same as theirs (and promise we wont peek at what we are passing, PROMISE!), but ours is shiny”. Again I haven’t used their stuff, and havent seen the code behind it, but I don’t see how that widget would go unnoticed as possible TOS violation.
Spencer, you have to understand, Michael’s *ahem* “misreading” of the emails is quite common. I like to describe Mr. Arrington as the token cart before the horse type of “pundit”. He doesn’t let facts define his beliefs, he lets his beliefs define the facts. I mean, they are, after all, just facts. Even though Mr. Arrington is a blowhard of the umpteenth degree, I still read TechCrunch…possibly for the same reason people watched Jerry Springer- it is a bit of a train wreck.
It seems quite obvious that the impetus for their ban of WL was due to personal animus. Strict black and white analysis of the vernacular utilized would seem to lend some credibility to that belief.
I must admit, I don’t hold WL completely innocent. It was obvious you were trying to go toe to toe with Ning, especially by citing your subscriber numbers etc time and time again. You played your strong hand, but it might have been too much for Ning to stomach.
Every story has two sides, and we may never know the “real” truth per se. I am certain, however, that it nowhere near what Dr. Arrington has prescribed for us.
P.S. What did Mick say to Ning? Because as it seems, whatever he said pissed Ning off so bad they banned you. Once you cut to the chase, the rest just seems like nonsense, and doesn’t fit. I’m fairly convinced Mick said something inflammatory and Ning said “F it”. Am I right?
P.S.S. I’m posting this again because I don’t think the first one went through.
It is “P.P.S.”. moron!
Ah, the anonymous grammar police…the same police that add unnecessary periods in the middle of their castigating comments. Ironic, isn’t it?
I appreciate the heads up nonetheless, and will attribute your unsolicited abrasiveness to the fact that you were beat up in school, and look to the internet to e-thug it up.
Seems like an Ego crash to me. Had I been Ning, I would have asked for their source code, slapped that on the test environment and analyzed the performance issues. Fixed them, sent the code back, and written up some documentation on what NOT to do for future 3rd party developers.
Everybody wins. (unless of course the whole point of this exercise is for Ning to reengineer the features and cut WL out).
EXACTLY RIGHT!!! That’s what having a platform requires! And you need support everyone, whether you like the tone of their emails or not.
As someone who has attempted over several months to communicate with Ning leadership on the lack of “community” features within Ning, the inability to integrate Ning with other websites (API), the incredible challenges Ning creates for network creators by continually installing updates without notifying us, and changing the basic layouts — I can tell you that your portrayal of Gina and Ning as providing calm, reasoned responses is way off base.
Dealing with these people is like hitting your head against a wall – a wall that is purposely put in front of you so you will have to hit – and that has no ability to learn how to become anything other than a wall that continually prevents progress.
You can be looking at a piece of white paper – and Ning will tell you they ran a study, and that paper is black. You can ask them who they used in the study – and they will tell you that information is confidential . . . but, don’t forget that piece of paper is black, you unintelligent idiot!
Ning regularly deletes conversations on their forums that are not “productive” – meaning, individuals who have not conformed to the Ning-way and have broken some Ning law about actually discussing Ning issues and how to deal with these issues. My favorite is watching a newbie inquire about the need for an actual community feature. Ning always responds that they have heard this request a few times (more like hundreds), and they are looking at adding it to the roadmap. If someone dares to step up and tell the newbie to not count on any action soon – BOOM, the post is deleted. HILE HITLER!
My point being – if you have been actively engaging with Ning, you will see certain Ning-isms all through the correspondence with WL. They make statements that are bogus, constantly act like people are attacking them, position themselves as gods of the tech-universe, and hardly EVER actually do what they say they are going to do.
I applaud WL for even trying to communicate with these folks. I simply gave up.
When I selected Ning – it was after extensive research, including the Ning propaganda about where they were going to take Ning. Hence, my complaints have merit. I “bought” the Ning line – but I was fooled. I’ll be getting my networks out of there as soon as possible. Ning’s disrespect of my obligations to my members has lost them any right to my business.
“BOOM, the post is deleted. HILE HITLER!”
Godwins law invoked, you lose.
What will you be using instead of Ning? I’m reading these comments because I’m considering Ning for a client’s sn.
Hmm… I disagree. From reading the emails, seems like Gina either lost her temper, or never really wanted to negotiate in the first place. And I guess Spencer wasn’t very good at containing his emotions, either.
From the outside, its hard to gauge whether or not WL was really causing serious issues with Ning’s network, but this is just as much Ning’s fault as WL’s. The user credential stuff is clearing a red-herring: they were just looking for an excuse to shut them down at that point. Anyway, the elephant in the room is the fact Ning turned off Dojo without any notification. If that isn’t evidence of bad faith, it is incompetence beyond belief.
Joe, you forget to remember who is who in this relationship.
One is a host, the other is a parasite…and I don’t mean “parasite” in a bad way, necessarily. It is simply a fact that cannot be overlooked or forgotten, especially if your livelihood depends on it.
Hosts often squish parasites…it is how nature intended this type of relationship to work…every parasite knows (or should know) the risks involved and do everything they can to tread lightly.
Arrington’s last sentence spells it out.
From the wiki:
“Symbiotic relationships included those associations in which one organisms lives on another (ectosymbiosis, such as mistletoe), or where one partner lives inside another (endosymbiosis, such as lactobacilli and other bacteria in humans or zooxanthelles in corals). Symbiotic relationships may be either obligate, i.e., necessary to the survival of at least one of the organisms involved, or facultative, where the relationship is beneficial but not essential to survival of the organisms. [9][10]”
Was this symbiotic relationship obligate or facultative?
Tune in to Southpark next week to find out!
Parasitism is a type of symbiotic relationship between organisms of different species in which one, the parasite, benefits from a prolonged, close association with the other, the host, which is harmed.
In general, parasites are much smaller than their hosts, show a high degree of specialization for their mode of life and reproduce more quickly and in greater numbers than their hosts.
Classic examples of parasitism include the interactions between vertebrate hosts and such diverse animals as the tapeworms, flukes, Plasmodium species and fleas.
Yea, of course you have to be aware of these things, and who you are dealing with. Still, comparing the relationship to host/parasite seems kind of strange. I don’t see how this turn of events helps either company. Maybe Ning will be able to dig themselves out of this from a technical standpoint, but they seem pretty hosed reputation-wise. Can’t see why anyone would want to do business with them. Maybe they’d like Microsoft to buy them out or something, but then they’ll get sued by WL, which seems to have a pretty good case.
sound like loserlabs violated TOS, and got TOSSED. fine. but why the secrecy on the part of Zing — rational or otherwise?
wow. after reading those emails, i’m astounded at a bunch of things:
- how much of an @sshole that ‘evilloser’ is. jc. wtf is _wrong_ with that dude?
- how Gina keeps calling the @sshole ’spencer’ instead of ’spence’
- how much of a loser one would have to be to use an email address with ‘evilgenius’ as the username component. f*cking. loser.
- how childlike the whole thing is. “I know, let’s send a bunch of emails back and forth incessantly and cry to our counterparts and craft crafty emails and we’ll send them and read them and write them and our coders will actually do work while we craft more emails and eat lunch in downtown palo alto and complain to our industry friends and think of new ways to craft newer and more craftier emails so we can send them on and wait anxiously for the next email reply and then we’ll just go on and on like we were in a Southpark episode and things go so bizarre and hilarious and ridiculous that even we suspected we ourselves were being losers and then we decided to stop crafting crafty emails and do some work.”
- how Ning totally f*cked that loserlabs company and all its and Ning’s users by pulling that dojo lib without any warning whatsoever. that is absolutely supreme awesomeness.
- how much more awesome it is that gina takes ‘full responsibility’ for working loserlabs and all their and Ning’s users as if it was no big deal. what Ning did was the technology equivalent of a war crime, and gina’s on the stand in the Hague and she’s like, “Yep. I did that.” She’s the George W. Bush of Technology.
More of this, please. I could read this sh*t all day.
“To wit”.
F*cking nitwit. This guy is great. If Gina is the George W. Bush of Technology, then ‘Spencer’ is the MTV Puck of Technology.
I guess Puck got evicted from the House of Ning. Brilliant.
“I’ll let you have the last word…”
…and by that I mean, _I_ am going to have the last word.
Awesome.
And here’s a great blast from the other side:
“Your team has neither the expertise nor the capacity.”
Shazam. Take that!
But this is not a genius quote:
“prevented these networks from loading the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser.”
I hope this guy is not the one behind ning technology. That would explain the technical difficulties over there, however.
My favorite part is :
“… Now we ask you to take us seriously as well.”
So, the guy calls himself Evil Genius and want to be taken seriously, ok…
Mike,
Since you were a former attorney, I’m surprised you haven’t applied your legal knowledge to this dispute.
As it relates to usernames and passwords, here’s Ning’s TOS:
“As a User, you are responsible for keeping your password secure. Names of Social Networks and Ning IDs are non-transferable. You will be solely responsible and liable for any activity that occurs under your Ning ID.”
I can find no language that would prevent Ning users from providing Widget Laboratory with their usernames and passwords as part of their business relationship with Widget Laboratory. There is no “harvesting” of “user credentials” as you claim.
In my opinion, Widget Laboratory may be able to make a reasonable case for tortious interference provided that it can establish that there was a contract (or implied contract) with its customers to provide support services and that as part of the provision of these support services, Widget Laboratory customers may *choose* to give Widget Laboratory access to their Ning accounts.
I’m surprised Ning would threaten to terminate Widget Laboratory’s accounts and disable its applications on these grounds.
For this to be valid, Ning would essentially have to take the position that Ning users have no ability to provide contractors and business partners with access to their accounts for the purpose of permitting those contractors and business partners to fulfill their contractual obligations.
That’s ridiculous. It would mean, for instance, that Ning could terminate an account because one of its users gave her username/password to a designer who she hired to create a design for her Ning social network.
Ning has absolutely no legal basis to interfere with its users’ business relationships in this fashion.
As you know, Ning DID NOT terminate Widget Laboratory for this because they probably knew that it was baseless.
As it relates to the *real reason* for termination (Ning’s claim that Widget Laboratory’s applications were harming the network), there are some points worth noting.
First, if Widget Laboratory decides to take legal action, Ning will need to provide evidence that Widget Laboratory’s applications were actually harming the network. This would be interesting because based on what I’ve heard, Ning has known issues with its architecture and users are frequently subjected to unscheduled maintenance to resolve all sorts of issues.
Second, as far as I can tell, Ning has no formal contract with developers like Widget Laboratory and that the standard TOS is all that exists.
My understanding is that Widget Laboratory sells its applications to Ning users and those users then “install” them on their own accounts.
If that’s the case and Ning believes Widget Laboratory’s applications are harming its network, Ning has the right to terminate Widget Laboratory’s account if that account is causing problems but it would also logically need to terminate the accounts of all users who are using a problemetic Widget Laboratory application.
As far as Ning is concerned given its TOS, it should not matter where a user received her code – if the account hampers resources, that account is in breach. Going after the provider of that code exclusively and specifically looks odd in the absence of a developer-specific contract.
Given all this, even if Widget Laboratory can’t establish a case for tortious interference, it might be able to make a reasonable claim that Ning’s actions constitute a tort of intentional interference with prospective economic advantage provided that it can prove Ning acted wrongfully.
Ning’s actions do seem very curious and Gina’s email leaves no doubt that Ning was looking for a reason to terminate.
Putting aside all legal issues, the facts are this:
1. Ning provided an API to developers so that they can build applications for Ning.
2. Widget Laboratory took that API and has become the most popular provider of Ning applications.
3. Widget Laboratory and Ning developed a tense relationship but apparently always worked through issues until now.
4. Ning has terminated Widget Laboratory’s account and disabled all of its applications with no warning to users of those applications.
So I suppose the questions is why would anyone want to develop for Ning if this is the way it treats its most popular application developer?
Is Ning incapable of working professionally with its developers to provide support and resolve issues? Is the Ning API and architecture so flawed as to allow that poorly-written applications can degrade the entire network to the point where it has to suddenly turn off applications used by thousands of people?
Maybe Spencer Forman was difficult to work with but if Ning is prepared to throw in the towel on its top developers because it can’t work with them to resolve problems, it’s going to be hard for Ning to build a developer ecosystem and keep its users happy.
There are no winners here but the biggest loser is Ning because clearly it’s out of its league when it comes to building a viable developer platform.
Talk about a waste of $100 million+.
this is the most cogent comment throughout this entire discussion.
AA nailed it: “harvesting user credentials” is baseless; account termination should have occurred across all networks using the WL apps; is Ning that flawed that these apps can degrade the entire network; and what future is there for developers or network creators?
how can Ning be so awesome and suck so hard at the same time?
can someone create a LOL cat for this please?
It also kind of proves that Arrington sucked as an attorney..
When an app developer gets into a legalize terminology battle with a major platform provider, you already know the app developer is going to get kicked in the teeth.
What widgetlabs should have done is to do whatever they needed to do to play by the rules, as judged by Ning.
By going public with the disagreement, they close a lot of other doors that were previously available to them.
“When an app developer gets into a legalize terminology battle with a major platform provider, you already know the app developer is going to get kicked in the teeth.”
Flawless. Suitable for framing.
gosh yr post shows the need for a God of tech .not windows billgiver pimple face zuckerbook , techie kid netscaping peace networker marc the san andreas fault nor heil hitler ningina can hold a candle for that position.no wonder netscape does not exist nomore ! spence I feel 4 u guys but looks like yall did not kiss the right assess ! lol ! proves u arent as evil as we all thot .lol ! n sincerely i think there is nothing wrong with calling yourself EvilG . lol we liked it ! guess thats why we all got screwed too ! now where is my paypal refund button , i guess them numskulls are gonna try their best not to pay me back .
lol get software from Evil geeks to use on nazining and paypalcons refuse to refund u . I love d web !
I am not sure why you are so angry Mike? Yes WL should of taken a different approach with Ning. The emails were confrontational when they should of been more constructive. However getting good help online and decent documentation for API’s is difficult. When your investing your future in developing 3rd party apps and you can’t get quick good service it makes you want to scream.
It still baffles me why these companies don’t offer paid support. From the sounds of things the major issue wasn’t the password/username issue but two patterns of code that didn’t mess well.
Nings platform was speaking English and WL widgets were speaking slang.
It would be interesting to know if Nings API is stable enough for 3rd party apps and if it has strong documentation to support it.
The truth is you don’t have any more proof today than you did yesterday. The emails don’t prove or disprove either side.
Clueless.
As per the brilliant philosopher Rodney King: “Why don’t we all get along…?”
To the condescending “armchair” attorney: get lost, do something else with your time.
There is no need to ‘explain’ the IT abc’s to TC’s audience: most of us have the technical knowledge and experience to understand what is going on between Ning and WL.
John
I disagree. It is quite obvious that there are a number of individuals that don’t know the legal implications of what each party is doing. Why in the hell would you repudiate a well composed, well reasoned, and well substantiated comment…while your comment was nothing but troll and tripe.
RACISM is good for your mental health!
All I get from the email chain is that WL was frustrated that Ning wasn’t trying to work with them.
Did I miss something?
this whole back and forth from wl, tech crunch posting the follow up seem pretty junior high for me
we get it they were banned for volation of tos
no need for thread after thread with follow up gossip
is it a bunch of woman running this site ?
Obviously not or there wouldn’t be so many insults and pssing contests!
Hmmm, from page 15 of the 16 pages of emails linked to by Daniel, “Bob” advises that Ning’s TOS gives “Ning has the right (at its sole discretion) to delete, deactivate… without any notice or for any reason.”
My thoughts on the 16 pages of emails:
1) These are long emails. Both Gina and Evil could get to the point faster and with more clarity.
2) The Tech guy’s response at Ning that he failed to respond because his spam filter has filtered out the WL’s guys email. That about says it all right there.
3) Customers got screwed. That’s on both parties — neither side was particularly constructive.
\Will be interesting if this were to go to trial to see a judicial weighting of the TOS. We all know the EULA and TOS are set up solely to protect, most often at absurdist level, the provider. Can Ning simply cite a TOS terms such as what “Bob” ultimately relayed as a means to screw their customers and WL???
I would like to see this go to court and find out. I’d like to encourage WL to pursue this. If I were a juror, I’d find Ning’s TOS and objectives to be both fraudulent with respect to both WL and Ning’s customer’s interests (assuming WL did not heedlessly damange Ning’s network). Sort of like, “help us develop this, but we can shut you down for any reason whatsoever…” which is certain to happen once a 3rd party developer’s success was a threat to dilute ROI of Ning and its VCs (likely lurking in the background here).
Great stuff.
Now I get it!… It is Sunday afternoon and the slow ones stay home and write very stupid things on blogs.
I am at my office working and, of course, putting out fires that my codemonkeys have started [yes, I own my company.]
To “anon”: you wrote “Ning has the right (at its sole discretion) to delete, deactivate… without any notice or for any reason.” Of course. Ning own the store!
The IoS? Let me put it in a way that even you could understand –You see, the ‘Terms of Service’ or ‘Terms of Use’ could be compared to a house/apt lease or rental agreement: it would state that the renter/occupant/Widget Laboratory cannot mess with the installed plumbing, and if you do, and continue to do so even when you are warned several times, I am sorry, but your a** is out!!!
Get it?
John
Are you asking yourself if you get it? Because it is obvious you don’t.
Companies don’t necessary have carte blanche to do what they want just because it is a service they provide. You really need to learn a bit more about legal concepts such as tortious interference etc…hopefully then you won’t come onto the internet posting nonsense in areas of knowledge of which you have none.
Get it?
@John Kelsey, does your job consist of reading techcrunch and making inane remarks about stuff you have no clue about? If so, you seem to be working pretty hard.
Having been a beginning user of WL I found the cutoff by Ning to be atrocious. What WL was putting out there to customers made me more sensitive to them.
The response from Ning, what there was of it, was dull at best.
WL posting the email strings chnaged my mind a bit. Surely there is other stuff not in the public about this but I was disappointed in the language used by WL.
How one can say they did not see this coming, their being cutoff, is mindboggling to me.
All in all, a disappointment that these two entities have not yet worked this out. Clearly the WL products were good and worked well. I hope Ning comes up with their own or finds a way to work with WL. WL proved these products were wanted by the users.
No, they aren’t idiots, you’re the idiot for believing them.
I agree with this.
Sounds to me like the emails were long because things had already deteriorated to such a severe degree — hence the long set-up for the phone call.
I will meanwhile LOL at people who see this as a fair/unfair issue. For reals: everyone who ever designed any application for Windows had it in the back of their mind (and hopefully their business plan) that said application could be cloned (usually in a half-assed manner) and bundled with the operating system at any time. That’s the danger of building castles in someone else’s sandbox. Most of us have learned to live with it.
I couldn’t imagine defending either this tool “Evil Genius” or Ning. Ning IMO is pretty much a copyright piracy haven — nothing wrong with that in my eyes, but it’s just a Web 2.0 version of Hotline, Carracho and other apps, only we were too dumb back in 1997 to load in buzzwords about “community” while we were happily downloading apps and MP3s.
As for “Evil Genius”, Steve Ballmer used to call it riding the bull — trying to stay on IBM’s back while developing for them without getting thrown off. Your snotty emails were pretty much all I would have needed to hear to buck you off myself, were I Marc or Gina.
After reading a recent TC article discussing the ‘real’ number of sites deployed using Ning (ie those with actual users/members) it seems to me that this ‘news’ is a lot of hot air about nothing. Ning was never appealing to me (and I run a web dev company and am always looking for new ways of delivering content) as it doesn’t really offer anything that couldn’t be built by a junior programmer (in my opinion).
All this noise about Ning and WL only strengthens my opinion that Ning is only really getting/maintaining coverage because of its famous director – and nothing else. I bet if Ning were developed by some small time company then the world would still be asking ‘whats a ning?’.
The bottom line is simple and applies to both widget developers and site builders – if you want to ‘control’ your development environment then you MUST roll your own – don’t rely on some ‘free’ service then cry foul when it falls over – for what ever reason.
From my own observations over the past year or so, it seems that anyone who builds a business around developing widgets for another companies free platform (Ning/FaceBook etc) is really asking for trouble once they reach a certain degree of uptake by the user commmunity.
Agree, gossip is a great PR tool. It’s working, look at the number of comments on this post (and the previous one on this subject).
btw, what is a ning?
The opposite of a nong I suspect.
lol u got dat wrong the oppositefor a a ning is nang ! nong is the synonym for wrong ! and ning is nong ! lol ! I bought WLabs and i bought ning what do u call someone like me a nonglab !
Lord have mercy on us for being stupid !
To get a Good scope on things someone call in Loren from 1938Media!!
WL are children and Ning is foolish and wasting lots of peoples money.
A properly run business would have reverse engineered the widgets to replace them for the customers and then cut out WL all while being on solid legal ground and then have another $30 a month per user in revenue.
Isnt that what MSFT did?
It’s what any proper business would do. I swear some of these children in web 2.0 think that business is not about money.
For anyone into freemium, community, blog, social awareness etc. etc. etc. repeat this mantra. Money pays the bills.
Unfortunately for the investors, it is their money that is paying the bills. Bring on the nuclear winter burn.
Oh for God’s sake! @Ning , if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
i.e Dont release an API in the first place just ‘cos you are responding e to Youtube but can’t handle the fallout and stop the damn whining
P.S. formulate your private exits before you burn through your VC funding
this has big implications for ad networks as well. When one relies on access to a closed and proprietary marketplace, it makes one question the security and stability of the revenues and/or userbase.
Of course, Ning has the right to do whatever it wants. But if they had to do it over again, would they? It doesn’t make any sense. It makes every investor in widgets and ad networks catering to social nets question the nature of investing in these types of ecosystems. Not good for a player like Ning not to have 3rd-party developers feel safe.
Any Marc Andreesen company probably gets 100x multiple to revenues from a valuation standpoint, why didn’t just pay this guy some small dollars and add it to Ning’s top line.
This will blow over, but every pitch on Sand Hill Road is going to be met with skepticism, as it should with 3rd-party devs for social nets.
I am in the ad network business and this episode has certainly impacted my approach to our business. Never rely on one supplier for the bulk of your network or inventory. We are going to start hedging risk right away.
These types of lessons is exactly why I read TechCrunch.
Dude…if you needed tc to figure out that you should not bet your business on parasitism – you would be average…which seems to be good enough nowadays.
For those of us that count on profits to survive day to day – this is elementary level shizzle.
You’re digging your own grave here. If you have a problem with a company who supports the existence of your entire business, don’t go on blogs and ranting all over the internet to get favoritism. Work with the company closely, professionally, and most of all, silently, to resolve the issue.
If you can’t, take your business model, and apply it to one of Ning’s competitors. Because of this entire process, you’ll most likely find none of them willing to work with you now.
I think AnythingNothing.com should sell a product called Ning… they already have Nix and Nil… Ning would fit right in…
Say what you will about either company, for me it all comes down to one thing…
In an email from ning to Widget laboratories…
“our Terms of Service clearly state that “Ning has the right (at its sole discretion) to delete or deactivate your account, block your email or IP address, or otherwise terminate your access to or use of the Ning Platform or any Network, or remove and discard any Code or Content within any Network, without notice and for any reason”. ”
Am I reading that right? they can delete anyone’s account for any reason! When did we become a people of censorship? Maybe Ning should consider moving to China, I think they’d fit right in.
What?!? Please tell me you just haven’t thought this through.
This isn’t the government we’re talking about…private enterprises should ALWAYS be allowed to refuse service to anyone for any reason, provided it doesn’t fall under the illegal discrimination category (age, race, etc). If I own a hot-dog stand and I don’t like some guy’s attitude, or the way he dresses, or pretty much anything else (other than issues listed above), I should certainly be allowed to not serve him. Similarly, why should Ning or Google or anyone else be forced to let you use an account on their platform? It’s not a right, it’s a privilege.
move to china ? lol its called ning silly , they is chinese , peace ma foot more or less war !
This is classic Arrington -kicking ass and taking names.
to E.T.Cook — Yes, “E.T.” — I get it. It is about the difference between intellectual honesty applied to business and your opinion, which sounds like the approach of a bottom feeder shyster, ready to benefit from a business conflict –no matter who is right.
It seems that you [on your 'expert' legal opinion] are already assigning “tortious interference” to Ning, when in reality WL [do not allow the facts to get in the way] has already committed it by screwing with Ning’s networks.
if you have already forgotten the true meaning of ‘tortious interference,’ not the interpretation you like, ask someone with half a brain read the basics to you from Black’s dictionary.
I certainly know that I am wasting my time on you –as I do at least once a week talking to our legal ‘eagles,’ who prove over and over that lawyering is the second oldest profession, and that our legal system is obviously not about justice, but about money.
Talking about ethical and moral business principles with lawyers is the equivalent of talking to a stupid dog… a monumental waste of time.
E.T., no hard feelings –have a nive day!
John
This is such unequivocally stupid post, that I was reticent to respond. However, I really want to be party to your overt campaign for misinformation. I do like the obligatory reference to Black’s Law Dictionary too…nice, but a tad bit predictable and cliche don’t you think?
Black’s doesn’t list out the elements of tortious interference, and I implore you to take your own advice, and research the matter. You’re missing a few elements.
I am not a lawyer, I just like to be informed, which doesn’t seem to be on your list of priorities either. You prove your own argument to be weak by delving into ad homonym attacks on lawyers- presumably targeting me?
Torts in general are legal concepts predicated on “ethics and morals”.
Either way, I appreciate your tangential input.
E.T., I already know that you are not a lawyer, just a pretender, but I do understand that anyone could post anything on any blog, as long as true identities are not revealed.
Your posts read as something that an uneducated, semi-literate person would write, even a twelve-year old using the computer in the den…
Again, no hard feelings…
John
John – Don’t forget Ning INVITED WL to go “screwing with Ning’s networks” by creating an API, and encouraging 3rd party development.
yawn. if this is a news story, then innovation in silicon valley has truly come to a halt.
notice how there haven’t been any real news over the last few weeks.
Kindle rumors don’t count?
maybe this is the nuclear winter andreesen was referring to when they raised all that money.
they just nuked their customers!
To Jon Wo and gilltots: Ning vs. WL is VERY real news with serious implications for many businesses.
If you are looking for gossip on Britney or Paris Hilton you have come to the wrong place!!!
Yeah, this says a lot about the SaaS industry and upcoming social networking platforms like the huge one at Facebook. Ning vs. WidgetLabs may not be important in and of itself but it’s still a very important case to watch for its impact on the developing industries.
Exactly right!!! Supporting third party developers takes an awfully lot, including putting up with folks you don’t like, and dealing with issues that third parties create using your API’s. $100M clearly isn’t enough to be able to handle that task… at least at Ning!
Is “harvesting user credentials” the same as, facebook or myspace, or any other service, asking for you user name and password for hotmail, yahoo etc, so you can spam, er contect eveeryone you know?
If so, arrington is wrong. If thats not what they were doing, it’d be SOOOOOOO much eaiser if arrington described what they were doing exactly, so we can judge.
They were terminated for degrading Ning’s performance (using Ning’s own API, building things Ning seems to say are ok to build).
The harvesting of user credentials things came up because some Network Creators gave WL login information so the WL could help them install the Widgets on their network. Would be like you giving a consultant access to your system. Read correctly Ning was basically telling them they couldn’t ask for access to other Network Creators networks in order to install their stuff, or help those Network Creators.