Recently a service called Ning decided to shut down their free service. Ning hosts social networks for people and groups. Up until recently they offered a free service and a few different premium services, ranging from $3.00 per month to $50.00 per month. People and groups who have previously been operating networks on the free service are now in a position of either shutting down their network or paying for the service.

Ning was recommended to many YWAM locations as an option for people to set-up their YWAM web-sites on. Quite a few of them went with the option of using Ning for their YWAM Centre web-site, and some of them were using the free version for their ministry or base web-site. Now that the free service is gone they will likely be on the line for $20 or more a month to keep the network (the $3.00 a month service only allows 150 users, so most networks need the more expensive service).

I remember using another service called Yahoo Live for live streaming. We used it for live streaming some of our ministry events and I used it for streaming some of my own things. Given how big of a company Yahoo is you would think that the service would be around, but it’s now shut down and has been replaced by many other live streaming services.

Can we really rely on free web services?

If I look at how I work in YWAM I can see that there are a lot of free web services that I use. How sure can I be that these services will still be running in a few years? And how am I backing up the data I have on those services?

Free services are great, especially for organisations like YWAM where money can be scarce. But sometimes the service can be worth exactly what you pay for it …

Sources:

Ning

http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/15/nings-bubble-bursts-no-more-free-networks-cuts-40-of-staff/

http://www.blogher.com/ning-close-all-free-networksblogher-gives-you-options

Yahoo Live

http://mashable.com/2008/11/03/yahoo-live-shutting-down/