Ning announced today that it will, “…phase out our free service.  Existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning.” This obviously has some very important ramifications for the thousands of educators that use Ning to network with each other and with their students.  In the short term, alternatives will almost definitely pop up.  Already, there are several competing products on the the market such as http://www.socialgo.com/.

The bigger question however is, will users continue to trust free services online.  Some free services have definitely carved out a space and have a defined business model, such as gmail.  However, other services have attempted to get buy in through offering their service for free before they begin to monetize.  Ning’s strategy, obviously not inspire confidence in the company as a whole and will likely leave many users with a sour taste in their mouth.  The argument can be made, that it would be better and perhaps even more reliable to self host community spaces.  There are several benefits, you have complete control over your site, you can choose which product you want to use and when you want to migrate between them and if you already own or rent hosting space or a server you have everything that’s needed to set up an online community.

One popular tool in higher ed is http://elgg.org/.  This is a powerful application that let you set up your own online community.  It does, however, take a bit of technical expertise to install.  An even simpler option is buddypress.org.  Buddypress is actually a set of plugins and themes for Wordpress that turns your Wordpress blog into an online community similar to Ning.  With wordpress’s super simple install process and simple online plugin install this option has come within the reach of technical novices.  The payback is huge.  With either of these open source projects, you have a site that is completely under your control and cannot be canceled.  In addition, you can choose how and if you want to monetize your site.

I know I have only mention a few options.  If you have other ideas, please include them in the comments section.