The eviction of Ning’s adult sites is in full swing. The actual shut down of the sites doesn’t happen until January 5 (extended from January 1), but the sites that are affected have now received an email with instructions on how to get their content off Ning.
Ning CEO Gina Bianchini says only about 1% of the 675,000 networks are being asked to leave for having adult content. She also points out that Ning attracts 2,500 – 3,000 new networks daily.
The reason Ning is shutting down adult sites despite the fact that cofounder Marc Andreessen thinks Ning should “let people fundamentally do what they want?”
Google.
Ning uses Google for advertising, and Google doesn’t like adult content. That puts Ning on a bit of a slippery slope when it comes to defining what is and isn’t adult content. But presumably they’ve now drawn that line, and those 1% of networks that are on the wrong side of it have been notified. So pack your content, and get out.
I am still baffled at the 104MM funding for Ning. If I was the investor, I will try to figure out how to pull my cash out or stall putting money into their bank account until they show a pretty good revenue stream.
For those commenting on the investment by VC’s, you’ve got to remember they are investing in Mark himself and not necessarily the idea of Ning.
Mark has two massive exits behind him – Netscape for $4.2 billion to AOL and Opsware for $1.6 billion to HP, so would you rather back an entrepreneur with a 2 from 2 record or someone else with no track record and a brilliant idea?
When you have the track record Mark has you have all sorts of doors open to you – and you take VC money purely to hedge your own risk but still take part of the upside on the deal.
Just my 2 cents…
Very good point Mitchell, this is the only explanation for such an investment. It will be interesting to see how big the flip will be on this one.
Sad to see Google dectating terms of the web. At least advertising there should be good rivals if not search
“Sad to see Google dectating terms of the web. At least advertising there should be good rivals if not search”
Welcome to why we need a strong Yahoo! (specifically strong advertising unit).
Microsoft ads are horrid – see Digg monenization stories of yesterday/Friday. They don’t even have car-related ad inventory for auto section. Another area Facebook is going to have to deal with as it’s locked to MS for ad serving.
Thanks you
__________________________
http://tinyurl.com/4rdhmc
May be stupid question how do these adult sites benefit from being on Ning exactly?
free hosting and probably a high pr
N is a very powerful SAAS vendor and anyone who thinks otherwise better think again.
G is selling ads on there website for the same subject matter.
its like kicking N in the shins to remind them of whos daddy.
what would happen if G cut N off completely? why cant N build there own ad system for there network of social sites? seems like a no brainer.
GeniusLocator – got sense!
It’s not a no-brainer. At Facebook we built our own ad system for the site. The original CTO (D’Angelo) was the author of the first version (up to 10MM active users), and I was the team manager for the second (currently-deployed, 140MM active users) version. If you want a system to be able to handle traffic of any appreciable scale, to leverage the targeting data your social network gives you, and to maintain high levels of system uptime, this is a world-class job. We needed a team of about a dozen people, including a number of top-grade people from Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft who’d had years of experience doing the same thing there before we were able to get a decent system up and running.
Yishan,
Doesn’t it say in the employee handbook that your not supposed to post publicly stating that you represent tbhne company??
If not they need a handbook fast
actually i think it’s great yishan is posting as himself.
Chris,
Anyone can post as anyone. See? I’m you.
Im sry dude, for some reason I always want to hit you!
“May be stupid question how do these adult sites benefit from being on Ning exactly?”
Saddos get to trade p0rNo with other saddos, and perhaps ‘hook up’ for shindiggery.
I think that is the ‘beneift’.
Actually, it has nothing to do with that at all. It’s about allowing adults to be adults on a great platform. No one “HAS” to have porn or benefit from it, but if it’s a site with ONLY adults then why should it NOT be allowed?
No no – Greg – Ben’s questions is not stupid at all and very profound actually. For some network creators it’s a pure hobby to build an adult social network but the bigger ones DO have a business reason. They want to (desperately) monetize – but the hardly can. Why?
1. Because ads in social networks hardly work. Just follow here on TC how FB and MS struggle. For adult social networks its worse because members are even more distracted and usually not interested in ads (which often are affiliate links to adult paysites). If you join a free adult social network joining an adult network is the LAST thing you want – so chances are very low that anybody will up sell. It has to be a very targeted special offering if it should work.
2. SocialGO promotes the option to monetize by selling access to social networks via PayPal. First this has to be proved to work – there are not many social networks where you have to pay to get access. Members are used to join for free. But there is another twist. PayPal does not <a href=”http://fosat.tumblr.com/post/66124480/paypal-does-not-allow-transactions-for-sexually” target=”_blank” transactions for sexually oriented digital goods. So I’m wondering how all those adult social networks on SocialGO want to monetize. There are other well-known adult billing companies but those are not supported (yet?). That would be a solution but that’s not on SGs agenda right now.
fosat – The Future of Sex and Technology
I wonder if NingLs largest network, 50 Cent’s ThisIs50.com will be kicked off for all the soft porn and nudity they host.
Google might not like adult content in adsense but it has no problem with serving adsense and other applications in racist publisher (and mostly posts). For example:http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?p=889885 – youtube content in hate site.
http://www.wifi...ead.php?t=11201 – adsense and also amazon.
http://forums.p...read.php?t=7037 – doubleclick
It is also in other networks like adbrite:
http://www.tots...d.php?t=2179996 – adbrite…
And the list go on and on…
I don’t care if this shit is only in several posts and not the entire sites – Google should take care of that before it even getting closer to adult.
Have your priority right !!!
Using a picture of Pirates of the Carribeans without any acknowledgment, huh?
They could say they are using it as parody. That would at least place it in legal limbo.
I’m not sure acknowledgment has anything to do with copyright law. And I’m betting I’m on safe legal ground here.
It would be considered fair use as parody. Giving acknowledgment is an issue, but since the movie is widely known it would be, again, parody. Thus, it probably does not matter if you give credit for the image or not. Plus you are using it as a form of visual commentary on a social issue. I’d say that you are good.
Carribeans without any acknowledgment, huh
hhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Ah, in world ruled by Google freedom has its limits. And so is “don’t be evil”.
While I don’t know their inner working, having worked at another social networking site that attracted adult content, I can guarantee that while 1% of networks may be adult, a considerabley larger portion of content and page views is adult. This will have a significant affect on their traffic (although maybe not their revenue if it is soley dependent on Google).
D, good point. If you have a blog check out the words that people search most and it up finding it and you might blush.
great another arrington post about sex… you certainly have some sexual frustration lined up.. duuude. Also for some weird reason you don’t like ning… so what’s the story in here…
And your headline is plain stupid and just shows how pathetic you are… has nothing to do with anything.
Mike what the fuck, grow up, get a life, get laid pleeeasse……. and leave the writing to others. You’re just an embarassment to yourself (look at leweb) and the country.
great another post about arrington… you certainly have some frustration lined up.. duuude. Also for some weird reason you don’t like techcrunch… so what’s the story in here…
And your comment is plain stupid and just shows how pathetic you are… has nothing to do with anything.
man what the fuck, grow up, get a life, get laid pleeeasse……. and leave the commentary to others. You’re just an embarassment to yourself.
Thanks. I enjoyed that.
so what part of France are you from?
Mike blaming the french! hahaha!
Mike, how do you call “fries” these days? Just curious.
@nobs
Sounds like the only sexually frustrated and repressed one is you, if you’re actually prudish or concerned enough to be bothered. Run along now. You’re bothering the adults.
What are you getting all wound up about? It says a lot about you that you take a blog post about (not a person) so personally.
Follow up question: so where do the adult sites go now? is there a ning for adult content? It seems like there at least 6750 former ning adult communities that now need a home.
kneel down or not?
who will do billing? PyPl?
http://fosat.tu...etworks-asns-go
PA
There might be an adult ning somewhere. Otherwise, there are some open source or low cost social networking scripts which could be hosted on a hosting provider that explicitly allows adult content.
I am not sure if the argument with Google AdSense does make any sense. If Google AdSense was the big problem, couldn´t they decide wich network use Google AdSense ads? Of course it would need some time to categorize the 675000 networks, but only a little portion of these networks will produce 80 per cent of all impressions … the theory of Google AdSense isn´t doing so well with me. I assume there are other reasons … why is Paypal not allowing to pay for adult ….
How about this for a reason: they used porn to get a jumpstart, and now they can afford to piss people off and kill crap left and right, like any user development or adult content that I’m sure helped them a lot to get started.
I am pretty sure a ning for porn can be setup without a problem. Where people can join social networks created for all their sexual interests.
Getting rid of the porn makes the most sense, advertisers don’t want there brand associated with it.
speaking of sketchy groups…has anyone seen how Planned Parenthood is COVERING UP rape of 13 year olds in Indiana? this video catches them red-handed: http://www.yout...h?v=hTxsWZz9whg
So the people who think that 13 year olds who are raped by 31 year olds should have no choice but to have the resulting baby want us to feel bad because certain people working at Planned Parenthood might not report the sex abuse?
Clearly the point here is to get people to be scared of going to planned parenthood – I guess it’s better if they keep their pregnancy secret or try and cause a miscarriage themselves? Or have the baby because they’re too scared and they shouldn’t have a choice in the better, even if they were raped?
Seriously, this is ridiculous. Should Planned Parenthood follow all of these laws? Yes, they should. But the intent here is obvious; scare people away from any option other than having the baby.
We’re supposed to see Planned Parenthood as the bad guy here, but the people who want to force a 13 year old raped by a 31 year old to have the baby are the “good guys”?
Seriously, the attempts to go after Planned Parenthood by anti-abortion activists seem incredibly self-destructive. If you REALLY want to see abortions cut down, going after Planned Parenthood isn’t the way to do it. A lot of what happens at Planned Parenthood has to do with birth control/etc.
But of course, it isn’t just abortions you want to forbid. You also want to forbid birth control, and believe in some idealistic world where no-one has sex without being married and no-one ever gets pregnant by any means…. and if they do, even if they are a 13 year old raped by a 31 year old, they should have the baby anyway, right?
Give me a break.
Flickr? Youtube? yeah, they’ve got porn. If you are basing your business solely on advertising on social sites then your business model is DOA anyway. Ning needs to innovate their business and revenue model, and not cutting out potentially attractive content and community.
excellent choice of photo & acronym.
glad somebody finally got the gtfo double meaning.
Happy holidays Mike
http://www.mysp...atedndetermined
Screw Ning and their obnoxious move! We moved to GROU.PS, it’s way better, no ads, better modules, cleaner interface! I’d wish we knew it before. http://grou.ps/enemas
GTFO = Get The F**k Out
test
How did Ning’s AdSense stay alive that long?
They weren’t running adsense on adult networks; they were running something else, which is why Arrington’s argument is wrong.
It’s gonna be interesting to see how SocialGO.com is going to handle the problem.
I think Google AdSense needs to have an option for Adult websites along with Adwords. This way, everyone is making more money.
And you may think, what about the search results. Well, when someone searches for 18+ related stuff, then the Adult ads show.
Or maybe even have Safe Search for Google Search.
It’s simple, and I know Google can make this possible.
Is anyone else getting the boot early? We have been working closely via the Ning helpdesk with them and they made all of our content available to us, but today… our network has been shut down without any provocation or notification from Ning. I’ve fired off the following email to them seeking some kind of guidance (of course there is no phone number listed anywhere in the world that I can find for them).
Hello,
Our Ning Community http://www.bearzone.com is inexplicably down. We have received no notification as to why our community has been removed. Our login thunder@****** reports that it doesn’t even exist any longer. For some reason it appears that you deleted our community and master account without any notification or provocation. We have been working closely with Jenny and others in the help.ning.com trouble ticket system in working to get all of our data off of Ning before you shut down adult services. Our Ning community is a legal Ning community. All videos and photos posted are held in moderation and approved only after being verified by a staff member. We have received no DMCA notices or any correspondence from Ning as to any issues other than the ones regarding our transition which are in an existing help ticket that we can now no longer access either.
Please explain and bring our network back up as soon as possible. We are still 10 days away from the deadline and should have access to our 35,000+ members until that time.
Regards,
Bryce
I just wanted to jump in here on a few fronts.
First, we are NOT shutting down adult networks that are abiding by our Terms of Service before January 5th. In fact, we’re working hard to see through our commitment to make adult networks content available to their Network Creators, so they can continue their networks elsewhere.
Second, as I mentioned in my original blog post, there were multiple reasons for us to come to the difficult decision to stop supporting adult networks on Ning. Google was one of them, but certainly not the only one. The time, effort and additional legal and support resources required of our team to address the disproportionate number of DMCA takedown notices on adult networks as well as the magnet our legal adult social networks created for illegal social networks made this a pretty straightforward decision in the midst of a brutal and prolonged recession. Even with the money that we have in the bank, we want to invest in engineering and our product, not more lawyers and additional support.
Speaking of DMCA takedown notices, Bryce, in your specific case, we received numerous DMCA takedown notices for alleged copyrighted content on your network and, as a result, were forced to remove your network immediately. We’ve been communicating with you on this, however there were multiple email addresses you were using, which made this a bit more challenging, so I can appreciate your frustration.
However, removing your network had nothing to do with our decision to stop supporting adult networks. As a Network Creator, you were doing what you could to prevent copyrighted content from being uploaded, but according to the copyright holders it was repeatedly added and, like any other online service, we need to enforce the DMCA process or risk being shutdown ourselves.
Gina
Gina, thanks for the comment. regarding Techy, I deleted that comment.
Hello Gina,
I have checked all of our email addresses and we received only one complaint over 1 month ago. There are no other emails from you. The DMCA provides a mechanism for content to be reported and for you to pass along those complaints to us so that we can prove that we have rights to post the content. If you do a whois on our domain name, you can find a valid email address (I’m sure you understand us not posting it here for spambots to latch on to). In fact, you can just reply to the email I sent ceo@ning.com if you prefer. At a minimum, we need access to our member csv file. I would prefer for ning to completely delete all photos and videos but still allow our 35,000 members to communicate and for us to download their information.
Again, I can’t find any evidence at any email address we would have ever used that we’ve had anything other than one contact regarding a DMCA complaint over one month ago that we delt with expeditiously. You have our credit card billing information which contains our phone number and you could have just sent a message through the Ning service itself. You have many methods to contact us and going through the comments at techcrunch seems to be the most ridiculous way possible for us to communicate
Thanks
Bryce
Ps… I should say thanks for posting here so that we know what is going on, but please contact us so that we can find a solution to this issue. I can assure you that there is no infringing material on our network.
Funding: $104M
and yet ning can’t even tie into vbulletin
You graduated at the top of your class, didn’t you?
I love the double standards on the web. I enjoy watching idiots making “ethical and moral” decisions to allow hookers to advertise on match making sites yet not allow an adult site to advertise. As an adult male on myspace, i get hammered with dating sites and “local” girls that want to “meet” me yet google and myspace both seem to find this completely innocent. Wake Up! This is the land of the free, the home of the brave… the state of this union is desperately falling into the hands of over zealous corporate entities all vying for our dollars. Let’s put a stop to this!
oh yah… why not give the Pirate some credit if you are going to use his image?
Google certainly has NO qualms about adult content. I spend circa £25-30K per month with them and have my own account exec contact in Ireland. None of it could be mis-understood as anything other than what it is either, so google know exactly what they sell to me
As for Ning shutting down adult sites, well the ones that were working will easily buy their own hosting and the others will have to come up with another idea to test. In any case I imagine that Ning will go on to make as much money from advertising as Digg, Facebook and Youtube.
I guess if Ning cant make money off your content, they dont need you…
Ning could have just removed google advertising from the adult section of they site and replace it with adult advertising.
If I could only create a social network for Adult….Google is head over toe about this adult thing and when its dark and no ones looking, everyone gets down low and dirty…
Anthony – you have no idea what you’re talking about. Ning for many months already does exactely that: Remove google ads from social networks behind adult warnings and replace them with AdltFrndFnder ads. But I bet they DON’T make much money with that. Because social network users have other things to do than click on ads in general and escpecially when the are surfing one-handed…
fosat – The Future of Sex and Technology
No mike I am not French – just well traveled. By the way thanks for leaving my comment… if you want specifics why most of your stories lack a deeper understanding and lack cutting through the BS let me know and I’ll gladly elaborate…
ahh – BS NoBS! Mike is just a good (agent?) provocateur with enough NLP training to know how to start good and entertaining flame wars and provoke healthy traffic peeks.
fosat – The Future of Sex and Technology
Jeeez!!!.. So i’m gonna pack my pro-nude stuffs and host it somewhere else??.. tsk tsk tsk..
I had or still have an adult site on Ning to house my Live TV talk show called The Rev Mel show. It was free to the members and we talked a lot about that’s its OK to be an adult and be in adult lifestyles. Yes my members put up adult photos but ning is now running ads on my site that are more adult then what we had on my site.
I paid ning each month to have my site on their network and yes I was in shock when I got their e-mail giving me a 30 day notice just before the holiday season.
My site on ning was helping a lot of people that could have been hurt by some adult lifestyles. I have been deeply hurt by all of this and had to rebuild my site costing me all the money that I had. I only had 1500 members but we all were really close and I have to start over. I’m not a web designer just someone that believed that we have the right to be adults. I’m one of the small sites that got hurt but my new site is up and I hope I can get all of my data from ning to my new site talkingsexradio.com.
Not all adult sites are bad or filled with porn some are just from a different point of view. To ning I say this years award go’s to you for making this one of the worst Christmas for many site owners. I know that Santa is going to put coal in your stocking this year.
Anyone who is affected by this and wants to have a new home for their social network with no restrictions and more features, drop me a line and we will take care of you.
I moved my site adultdatez.com from Ning.com to datingsitebuilder.com. They do allow adult websites. They are mainly for dating ,so I requested a few features for social networking, and they promised they would add them. So far so good.
hahaha funny thing
Ad sense barely pays for a cup of coffee
They do allow adult websites. They are mainly for dating ,so I requested a few features for social networking, and they promised they would add them. So far so good.
http://www.adultoysuk.co.uk/
We use PHPfox for serious site owners who want to host their own social networking solution free of these kinds of restrictions.
There is already a growing number of adultwebmasters who have gone with PHPFox as you can see in the forums: http://www.bran...ialnetworks.com
Feel free to contact me if you need a quote.
It’s a shame that google feels this way about adult content. It’s easy to pick on. All areas of the internet have bad people not just the adult arena. Were not all bad