An FYI from another list - I guess we are lucky we are latecomers to
Ning.
Begin forwarded message:
I am quite surprised that no one here on the WWWAC list picked up on
the news about Ning, the white-label community building site funded,
in part, by Marc Andreesen.
On Friday the 22nd of August, Ning summarily banned the network of
WidgetLaboratory, a developer of widgets that added much-needed
basic functionality to the Ning platform. The creators,
administrators, and users of over 1700 networks (including two that
I manage) that depended on WidgetLab widgets stopped functioning in
part or in whole. Well over 100,000 network members were affected,
and the downtime ranged from a minimum of 24 hours to 72 hours or
more before Ning engineers could provide workarounds that enabled
the sites to run again, although not with the functionality that was
in place before Ning shut WidgetLab down.
There are arguments on many sides as to why this happened: Ning says
that some WidgetLab widgets were causing unprecedented loads on some
sites and therefore had to be stopped before taking the entire
infrastructure down. Others posit that tiny WidgetLab (a couple of
guys in Bratislava) is earning more money than Ning, which has about
100 employees and over $100 million in VC financing and a $500
million valuation. I am sure there are valid (and not so valid)
points on all sides and that is not really the issue here.
What is, is a statement made by the CEO of Ning to the effect of,
"We have to place the 'health' of the Ning platform above the needs
of any individual network or collection of networks." From the
perspective of Ning's business that is true. But, from the
perspective of *my* business, that is the last thing I want to hear
from the provider of a service my business depended on.
One of primary benefits touted for cloud computing is that the
resource is always available. We know that is not true as evidenced
by downtime on Amazon's EC3 platform, challenges with GMail
associated with Apple's MobileMe service, and the failure of some
online backup storage provider businesses, and network and power
outages, among others. Infrastructure downtime is inevitable
irrespective of any claims made.
But, to my knowledge, this is the first time that I am aware of of a
cloud computing service deliberately blocking access to a third-
party software tool that hundreds of thousands of users depended on,
without warning, and without any concrete plans for providing an
alternative way to access the content made available through the use
of the software. As OpenSocial apps proliferate, more and more of
these scenarios are likely to occur.
It's now more than 10 days since my networks were affected and even
though Ning restored the content that was rendered inaccessible
when they banned WidgetLab, I still cannot edit the content
directly. I get Dojo application errors and 404s and the engineers
at Ning have not been able to provide an answer.
The lesson I learned from this turn of events is that it makes zero
business sense to trust my business to a *software* cloud service -
especially not Ning. I do recognize that it makes no sense to run
servers from my home or office so I do need to outsource those
aspects of running my online businesses. But never again with a
software service.
And I find it tremendously ironic that one of the investors in the
company is Marc Andreesen, who should know better.
:: Clay
--
Jeff Gimzek | Senior User Experience Designer
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | www.springstudio.com
________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe
List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines
List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
