Last year, we did something a little different than we have in previous years; we published a public Product Roadmap. It was a big success. It bolstered direct customer-company communication, and it really helped Ning Creators know what was coming next.

It was an ambitious roadmap, and by year’s end we had finished all but one of the projects we initially listed on the roadmap (we’re still working on Mobile improvements; it expanded in scope and became larger). All told, we completed many more projects in 2011 than we did in the 2 previous years combined. In fact, we actually added additional projects to the 2011 Roadmap as the year went along, making it our biggest year of improvements ever. All of those additional projects were based directly on the suggestions we received from our customers — thank you!

We’re going to keep up regular roadmap updates for 2012, although this year we’re going to do things a little differently. We’re still going to keep you updated about what we’re working on with our Product Roadmap page on Creators, but we’re going to shift to offering a more “living” document that shows:

1. What’s already in partial release
2. What we’re working on now that’s not yet released
3. What’s still in the planning stages

The goal is to update it frequently as we go along instead of offering one giant laundry list of features. We want the projects we’re reporting on to be focused on high quality — incorporating feedback we hear from our customers so we can be nimble and adjust what we’re building based on your valuable input. And, we’ll be adding to our roadmap as we complete projects throughout the year.

With all of that said, here’s what we have partially released, are working on, and are still planning…

Partially Released

Activity Feed: If you haven’t seen it yet, we also recently added “Top News” as a beta in the Ning Labs section of your Dashboard. Among other things, this feed pulls in Facebook and Twitter account posts into the Top News activity feed. We’ll be making additional visual improvements to this feed, implementing some real-time abilities for new activity items, and moving this feature out of beta. Check out the latest set of improvements we recently released. There’s more to come on this project that will help increase engagement on your Ning Network.

Member Categories & Badges: We know a lot of Ning Creators want to create different levels of membership for their community. We’ll be adding the ability for you to assign members to custom-made categories. The work on this project kicked off a few weeks ago with a reorganization of the member roles and moderation data to make finding and filtering members easier. Next, we’ll roll out the ability to create and administer categories in this area. This project will also include a way for you to create custom badges using these new member categories. This will be an excellent way for you to reward or identify admins, featured members, special people and all-stars on your community.

Working On It

Mobile Update: Not everyone is aware that there’s a mobile version of every Ning Network — it’s located at networkname.ning.com/m. If you are aware of it, you’ll be very happy to hear that we’re working on a redesign of this mobile interface that will be a giant improvement. This is one of the largest projects we’ve undertaken to date, and it’s really important. We want to get it right so that Ning Creators won’t just have a better mobile experience to offer their members, but will have a way to configure and customize the mobile version to really fit their community. We’ll be posting about this on Ning Creators and accepting volunteers for the beta group.

Help Center Redesign: Our Advocacy team is most excited about their revamp of the Help Center. It’s time for a refresh of the content, the look, the advice — all of it is currently in the process of being redone to be more friendly. Let us know if there are specific resources you’d like to see in our updated Help Center.

Planning it

Blog Update: The blog functionality on Ning Networks is ready for a redo. We’ve gotten a wealth of feedback from Ning Creators about what they’d like to see done differently with the blog feature. We have a lot of work planned to make the blog more powerful and much more visually appealing. We’ll share more details as this project unfolds.

Sign-Up Controls: We’ll offer expanded control over sign in and sign up options that will allow you to, for example, have an “open registration” during specific times and “closed registration” at other times. If you’re more interested in using Ning as a publishing platform over a community platform, you will be able to turn off all “Sign-Up” links and messaging visible to non-signed-in visitors.

New Commenting Options: Provide the ability to allow non-members to join in the conversation by using third-party commenting services (e.g., Facebook comments).

How we move forward

One thing we want to do is invest more resources in beta testing and iterating on the design of each new feature — very similar to what we did with the recently updated Chat. We started the complete Chat revamp with an early announcement about the feature, followed by the creation of a small test group, gradually opened up the beta to more people, announced our progress ahead of final deployment, and then rolled the feature out to everyone. It was one of our most successful product launches, and it incorporated a lot of opportunity for the most engaged Ning Creators to provide feedback. Being laser-focused on one project at a time (rather than being more generally focused on a giant list of projects) helped us make Chat even better than we had originally planned. We’d like to pattern more of our releases in a similar way.

We still plan to innovate in a big way, and, as always, there is additional work going on that’s not reflected in this product roadmap. For example, it may not be apparent that over the past year we greatly expanded language support for our marketing pages (Ning traverse le monde! FYI: We’ll be re-translating French and German soon), reorganized and consolidated domains, adopted new behind-the-scenes web services that make things run more smoothly, and many other projects. We continue to grow and become stronger as a platform when we do these types of essential, less visible projects. Building out all facets of our business — and not just the forward-facing product features — means a more reliable and robust product.

We’ll be continuing the conversation on Ning Creators and the Ning Blog about these projects, so look for ongoing announcements about beta access and updates on our progress. If you didn’t find your favorite request in this update, we’ll be updating the roadmap regularly with new items. As always, thank you for all of the suggestions and feedback!

In January, I was asked to go back to my alma mater, Colgate University, to speak to students about what it’s like to work in the social media space. Before I dive into the details, I’ll take a step back and say that much like many of the communities built on Ning today, Colgate is a close-knit and hyper-passionate community of people, so the chance to share my story and experiences working at Ning and Glam Media was something I couldn’t pass up.

Sian-Pierre Regis of Swagger New York (left) and Jason Rand, Ning & Glam Media. ©2012 Colgate University / Andrew M. Daddio.

A number of alumni also speaking at Colgate work in the social media and community-building space, and I wanted to hear their perspectives on creating and managing successful communities — something that’s definitely on the minds of Ning Creators and Glam Publishers. Sian-Pierre Regis, a classmate of mine, has created a media empire through his street lifestyle site, Swagger New York. Swagger introduces readers to the people, the music and the trends that are hot in New York. And they’re expanding to cover everything from news to fashion to technology to culture. Coincidentally, Swagger is also a Glam Publisher, meaning that premium brand advertisers can reach Swagger’s trendsetting community in authentic and engaging ways.

I also met with Matt Hames, Colgate’s Manager of Media Communications. His job entails managing Colgate’s digital presence and reaching out to people to showcase Colgate’s offerings as a nationally-renowned learning institute. He’s also an avid competitive curler, and leads a private Ning Network for the sport.

For all intents and purposes, Matt and Sian-Pierre are community managers at the helm of building recognition for a brand. For Matt, it’s Colgate University, and for Sian-Pierre it’s Swagger New York. More generally, they’re focused on bringing people together to share their excitement for something. This is the exact thing we see our Glam Publishers and Ning Creators doing everyday. Given their leadership, I asked Sian-Pierre and Matt to discuss their approach in building successful communities, and the things they’re doing to yield engagement, lively conversation, and valuable and impactful relationships.

How have you gone about building successful online communities?

Sian-Pierre: I have a very strong vision for the brand, and have always maintained that if the brand came off as cool, smart, different and YOUNG that Gen-Y’ers would stick by us. And they have. Through our Facebook channel specifically we have an intimate relationship with over 125k people, writing back to them when they comment, liking their posts and genuinely showing an interest in their personalities, loves, dislikes, etc. We’ve been able to get brand evangelists who have reblogged us or hyped us up with international press outlets, etc. We even used three of our fans in a GILT Man campaign, so our followers feel like they are actually a part of something bigger.

Matt: The first step is to decide what value the product or service can offer in return. It can simply be “getting people who are fans of this” into one place. Or it can be the exchange of ideas. There needs to be a thing that people get out of joining the community.

What was your uh-huh moment that an online community was not only important, but necessary?

Matt: Unlike a marketing campaign designed to get people to think a certain way about a brand, a community can be harnessed to continually learn about fans and members. Part focus group, part evangelists, this is the first time brands can give back to their best customers while giving them a voice.

What advice do you have for community organizers looking to get started?

Sian-Pierre: No one’s watching you when you start. So just start. And then build every day until you’ve got your identity…and then ATTACK.

Matt: Try to learn what your best customers/supporters want or like. They will be the beginning of your community. Learn from them. Also, they self-identify as fans. Try to let them as far inside as possible. Show them the making of TV spots. Give them access to important people.

How are you measuring success?

Sian-Pierre: Up until this point, I measured success in visual quality of the brand, press mentions, all the more superficial stuff. Now, it’s engagement, and website traffic. The fact is, if your fans and members aren’t engaged then your brand isn’t really marketable.

Matt: Good question: we’re setting some initial goals on the Facebook page. One is to attract more current students, so we’ll compare that age group’s growth in stats.

Measurement starts with specific goals. Attract more students to Facebook. Use Google+ to attract more international students. Get people who come to Colgate.edu to engage in social media.

Facebook fans and Twitter followers are important – what’s the next step beyond getting these likes and followers?

Sian-Pierre: Taking them off Facebook and Twitter and having them live on your own site.

Matt: Involve them. Most other advertising (for example, Super Bowl TV spots) tries to entertain people. Social media needs to involve people in the inner workings of the brand or organization. Let them see as far under the hood as possible.

How do you weave all the conversations together happening across the web about your brand?

Sian-Pierre: We try and interweave all the conversations together by referencing what’s happening on our other channels and driving people between where we have a presence.

Matt: First listen. Find out where people are and what they are saying and get involved.

How do you reward your community or active individuals contributing?

Matt: People like stuff. But more importantly, they like an inside look at stuff.

How do you keep people engaged and coming back to your community?

Sian-Pierre: Showing up every day, giving them what they tell us they want through their comments, and building the community with their guidance.

Matt: Work at giving them a reason to come back. Content. Think about the goals – who you want to attract and why you want to attract them. If you can answer that, you will have an idea how to engage them.

I like to think about the community in real life. If all those people were standing in a room, what would I tell them? How would I get them talking? How often will I talk?

Then, I do what I can to plan what I’ll say.

At Ning, we’ve long believed in giving you and your members the flexibility to share and converse with one another in whatever means is optimal for your community – and today we’re launching a major upgrade to one of our most popular features: Chat.

We’ve rebuilt the new Chat from the ground-up, meaning we took a fine-toothed comb at how Chat should work with your 2012 expectations of web technology. The new Chat is made using HTML5, expanding the speed, options and customizations available to you through the feature. HTML5 also means that the new Chat is also now available on iPad and iPhone, Android-powered devices, and many of the newer mobile platforms available today.

Besides the updates we’ve made under the hood, we’ve also improved the readability as you use Chat. We’ve consolidated on white space, meaning you’ll see more of the conversation without the need to scroll through the past. Posts are grouped together, and appear under the same timestamp, name and avatar. After 1 minute of inactivity, we’ll add a new timestamp, so that you’ll know when the conversation left off and picked up again.

We’ve also added more controls and customizations with Chat. Its appearance will match the standard font used on your Ning Network, and Chat also adopts your network’s color scheme. Much in the same way you can use the Language Editor to make tweaks and customize the language across your Ning Network, you can do the same with the new Chat. Appearance customizations are now available for Chat with CSS. You now also have a universal and easy way to toggle Chat’s notification sounds on or off, and even a way to upload your own sound to be used to notify you and members of new Chat activity.

There are 4 new and improved displays for Chat: bar, module, full page and pop-out, giving you and your members the ability to easily show and hide chat messages according to individual preferences. With the updated new Chat bar, we also now support a new and improved pop-out chat, which will allow Chat to be ever-present even as you and your members navigate around your Ning Network and the web.

You no longer have to toggle between the network-wide chat and one-on-one chats. Now, when a one-on-one chat is started, a new private window will open up and you’ll be up and running in a private chat. You can pop-out the private chat or let it stay in the Chat bar.

As the Ning Creator, an admin or a chat moderator, you’ll see an “x” next to any chat post. You’ll be able to delete the post, and temporarily suspend the member from Chat. A member’s suspension from Chat can range from 15 minutes to 24 hours – it’s up to you. You and your members can also choose to ignore chat posts by specific members. This means that you won’t receive private messages and posts by anyone you’ve ignored, even in the Main Room.

Want to know more? Check out our new Ning Help Center articles that explain all the details about the new Chat:

• Introduction to Chat
• Get to Know the Chat Bar
• Control the Display Options for Your Chat Feature
• Moderate Chat on Your Ning Network
• View the Online Members in Chat

We’d like to thank all of the beta-testing Ning Creators who gave the new Chat a whirl and provided us with great feedback as we iterated this new feature. We’ll continue to take feedback from you and would love to know what you think. Feel free to comment below or on this Creators group. Happy chatting!

We’re writing as a company today to express our concerns with a couple legislative bills currently being debated in Congress (the “Protect IP Act” and the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA). Much has been written, many have opposed, but the beat goes on. We think this kind of legislation is a big deal that doesn’t come around often. Here’s why:

As background, these bills would give the US government and private individuals additional enforcement tools to combat websites that may be engaged in copyright infringement or counterfeiting. The goal is clearly well meaning—online infringement is a serious issue that demands serious enforcement. As with many things, however, the devil is in how the goal will be accomplished. In summary, court orders can be sought against any website (wherever located) that is believed to be engaging in online infringement. If an order issues, payment providers and advertising networks can be barred from doing business with the site, search engines must stop returning results for the site and domain name servers would need to blacklist access to the site’s domain name.

Even after Congressional revision last month, the current bills remain extremely broad. Legitimate websites can be put on an “American blacklist” without warning or an opportunity to defend themselves (whether that blacklist would even be effective at stopping traffic to an offending site is a whole other issue). A single complaint could trigger a blacklist, with the burden of proof on that website to get itself unblocked. This could lead to unprecedented monitoring of websites, subject to individual judgment (read: censorship). Here at Ning, we don’t think our Network Creators should be subjected to that kind of policy.

This would be a radical restructuring of Internet law. Oodles of unproductive and time-consuming litigation would arise to challenge and interpret the bills. We think it’s necessary to have a careful, broad-based debate on more targeted and effective measures for combating online IP infringement.

Here’s what you can do: Learn more, join the fight. Contact your Representative or Senator and tell them to oppose these bills. These bills are being debated again when Congress returns to session in late January. Or just use the power of social media—you can make a difference.

I’m excited to announce that we have completed our merger with Glam. As of today, Ning is officially part of the Glam Media family!

We’ve release more than 35 major new features in the last year alone, and we have some major enhancements in the works — including an all-new Chat and continued updates to the popular Activity Feed. We’re hard at work on a bunch of new features that we’ll share with you in an updated product roadmap blog post later this month. If you’re a Network Creator who is interested in becoming part of the Glam Media Network, you can find out more about how to apply for that here. For all of our customers who have been following our progress from milestone to milestone, you can expect your Ning service to continue unchanged — and you can continue to expect us to build out exciting new features to help you get the most out of your Ning Network.

You can read the press release here.

We will be performing maintenance on the Ning Platform this coming Friday, December 2, from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. (midnight) Pacific Time. During this time, all Ning Networks will be unavailable for 2 hours.

We’re proud to have been able to realize a consistently high uptime over the past year. To keep this consistent record high, we need to perform some crucial upgrades to hardware, systems and databases. We want to ensure your Ning Network stays online and speedy for the next year and beyond.

During this time:

• Your Ning Network will display a maintenance page matching your current theme customization to let your members know that your community is temporarily unavailable.
• We will update the Ning Status Blog when this maintenance begins and ends.
• We’ll also provide ongoing updates during this maintenance period on the Ning Status Blog and on our @Ning Twitter account.
• The Creators Network will also be down for maintenance. We will update on Creators when all is complete.

We recommend advising your members of this downtime in advance via a broadcast message and/or other notices on your Main page. We’ve put together some boilerplate language you can use for messaging by simply copying and pasting. Or, tailor it for your community:

• Formal: We will be performing maintenance on [network_name] this Friday, December 2, from 10 p.m. to 12 a.m. (midnight) Pacific Time. During this time, [network_name] will be unavailable. We hope this won’t be too much of an inconvenience as we work to perform some necessary upgrades.
• Informal: Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that we need to perform some simple but necessary maintenance on [network_name] this coming Friday, December 2. We’ll need to take the site down from 10-midnight (Pacific). During these 2 hours, we’ll simply show a message asking folks to check back later. Thanks in advance for your patience while we tune up the site!

We know that maintenance like this can be an inconvenience, and we appreciate your patience while we perform it!

As people in the United States prepare to spend time with their families for Thanksgiving, Mogwee is here to help coordinate the hustle and bustle. Here are a few ways to make good use of Mogwee this week:

• Make a family Hangout to coordinate plans, share shopping lists and post real-time photos with relatives that can’t make it to the feast.
• Picking people up? Make things easier with the “Share a Location” feature.
• Can’t decide what side dishes to serve? Make a quick poll to settle things.
• Get everyone in the spirit by sharing some classic Thanksgiving-themed YouTube videos. Here’s one to get you started.

Mogwee is free, and you can get started in seconds using your iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android device or the Web. Have a great holiday!

At Ning, we’ve long believed in providing a platform enabling people to create communities for the things most important to them; allowing you to share and connect freely, with anyone. What’s blossomed has been Ning Networks whose topics and foci run the gamut, and as a Ning employee I think it’s been incredibly awesome to see so many communities grow and flourish.

Occupy Cal (Nov 15), photo by Daniel Parks

By now, you’ve probably heard about the Occupy protests happening around the world. The Occupy movement is making the headline news, while student-captured footage of the UC Davis pepper spray incident has had millions of views and shares on YouTube and Facebook (along with many tongue-in-cheek memes). People are sharing their personal stories of economic and career hardship, and governments are being asked to take responsibility and help their people. A longtime muted 99% is now being heard worldwide through these protests and the sharing of information online.

In the past, we’ve highlighted how people discover and find Ning communities in both times of joy and hardship or uncertainty. Given what’s been happening, an Occupy Wall Street YouTube video linking to the Ning Network, Occupy America Social Network, caught our attention. The community is primarily using the Ning Platform to share information through the Blog and Video features, both of which are prominently highlighted on the community’s homepage. Posts and uploads began at the end of September and according to Site Meter, there are now over 140 blog posts and 170 videos relating to the movement from occupiers around the world, attracting about 1,400 visitors to the site daily.

Topicality aside, the Occupy America Social Network gets at what we’re all about – it’s a prime example of how easily the Ning Platform can be used as a “pop-up shop” of sorts for quickly organizing people through online community. Given a passionate base of supporters, we can’t wait to see where the Occupy America Social Network goes from here.

What is your community standing up for, and how is the Ning Platform giving you a voice? Let us know in the comments.

Last week, Ning was mentioned in Marty Weintraub’s Search Engine Land article, Content Marketing Essentials: Tactical Advice From A To Z. His post highlights ways marketers and businesses can develop a strategy through crafting quality written and creative content for their presence online, further building their brand. Interestingly, many of the steps Marty highlights appeal to the greater audience of Ning’s community organizers and those looking to weave social conversations in their content and inspire action online.

While Marty buckets Ning alongside blogging services like WordPress, he differentiates Ning as a platform underpinning the social endeavors many businesses, organizations and people aspire to establish and support within their website.

The Ning Platform enables communities to easily form and blossom online, allowing the conversation to grow organically by attracting people to the things they care most about; we see many examples underlining the various conversations and connections happening through Ning. For instance, seeking advice about how to cope with a diabetes diagnosis? The Ning Network TuDiabetes provides the outlet and a safe place to share your story and learn from others. Conversely, teeming with excitement over the movie premier of Twilight Breaking Dawn and looking for exclusive interviews with Twilight cast members? The Twilight Saga is the Ning community to hear the latest gossip or post your predictions for the final movie.

What’s happening on your Ning Network or how you are contributing to communities you’ve joined?

At Ning, we’re all about community. If you’re a current Ning Creator, you’ve probably picked up on this little point of pride; if you’re checking us out for the first time, we’re glad you’re here to learn more!

The Ning Platform is only as interesting and impactful as the 100,000 communities and millions of community members using the service daily. To this point, we see communities ranging a multitude of businesses interests, professions, geographies, expertise, hobbies, life-long connections, lifestyles… you name it – and this is exactly what we love to see happening with Ning.

In honor of Veterans Day and the millions of men and women serving our country, we wanted to bring to light a few veteran Ning communities. Two years ago, we first highlighted IAVA’s Community of Veterans, a private Ning community focused on serving Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Last year, we invited IAVA’s Community Manager, Jason Hasman, to Ning HQ. Jason, an Iraq veteran, is responsible for maintaining and growing Community of Veterans and we asked him how IAVA has turned into such a special and impactful community for veterans back from deployment:

While Veterans all have one thing in common through protecting and serving their country, we see Ning communities bubbling up to support and bring together segments of veteran populations. It’s been quite the year for the US military, with one issue being especially top of mind: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Though the policy has been repealed, burgeoning support and pride for LGBT civil servants and veterans is the focus for the Ning Network DOD Federal Globe.

Though Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell made national news, camaraderie and bonds formed by veterans leaning on the support of their peers extends beyond this deeply debated topic. For UW Vets for Vets, the Ning community forms the University of Wisconsin-Madison Chapter of the national organization, Student Veterans of America. Vets for Vets is a place for student veterans attending UW-Wisconsin to come together, learn about their benefits and support activities, and raise awareness amongst the greater UW-Wisconsin student population about student veterans’ experiences. The Ning community is open to all UW-Madison students, facilitating a place to open the lines of communication between active duty veterans, veterans and student-civilians.

Veterans and their families may face many challenges while reintegrating back into civilian life. The good news is that there are many services and communities to help soften this landing. Military to Medicine is a Ning community dedicated to bringing healthcare training and career opportunities to military families. The organization supports veterans, wounded veterans, National Guard and Reserve members, other service members and military spouses. The community includes new job openings and resources for veterans looking for guidance and support during their adjustment.

In the same vein, Lone Star Veterans Association is a community dedicated to supporting post 9/11 veterans and their families through “direction communications, advocacy, employment assistance, mentoring, service and social programming.” As the mentoring and networking arm of Houston’s Returning Veteran Initiative, the Ning community “provides the open support system and social outlets for service members transitioning back into civilian life through programs, events and peer mentoring.”

On the lighter side of things, military Ning communities also form around civilian interests. Military Sea Hawkers serves as the military chapter of the official booster club of the Seattle Seahawks, giving active service members and veterans a place to celebrate their favorite football team and root on the Sea Hawks with their comrades.

We’re truly glad to see these wonderful bonds and communities coming to fruition through Ning; thank you to all active service men and women and veterans for showing us how your camaraderie creates community.