Creekmore Consulting

I’m easy. In fact, I’m a flat-out sucker for the director of support making a comment on my blog and apologizing for my problem.

I’ve complained in the past couple of days about some problems I had with Ning, and today, Laura G. from Ning let me know that in one instance, I’d actually run into a bug that they’ve now fixed.

So I will just add this as my final though on Ning for a while: It may be frustrating, but they are paying attention. So, thanks, Laura G.

Yesterday, I was complaining about Ning making it too hard to change my email. But I still wanted to fix it, so I dug around and found the Ning test site I’d built so I could update my email, as my other site told me I’d have to do.

And — you already knew this, didn’t you — I had a third email account on my test site.

Stumped, I went back to Digital Nashville, where I wanted to update my contact info in the first place. I tried again to change my email in the profile area. No dice. Same error as before. I clicked the “Settings” button in the top right. Your email address is also listed there. And there, Ning let me update my email.

I honestly can’t tell the difference between the Profile and the Settings pages. They look exactly the same. So I’m still calling this whole experience a disaster, even though I did update my email in the end. I’ve said for a long time that Ning is too hard to use, though it still seems to be better than any alternative. I may have to revise my thoughts there….maybe nothing is better.

Please tell me where I’m being an idiot here. I really like the theory of Ning. I want to like the reality of Ning. I just haven’t found any reason to yet.

I don’t want to be a hater, but my frustration with Ning grows day by day.

What Ning does
Ning is a site designed to make it easy for you to create an online gathering place for your group. So, for example, I’m a member of a Ning group for Digital Nashville–Web and tech professionals here in town, one for my high school, and one for contributors to a moms’ website where I write.

Each of these is a separate community. I can’t flip from one to the other. Though they are built on the same platform, they function independently.

Except for one thing.

User error
I once made the mistake of starting a Ning site. I was just testing some features, comparing Ning to some other community solutions. And so, Ning knows that I am a site creator.

At some later time, I stupidly changed one of my Ning community’s email addresses to be the same one I’d used to test my own Ning community.

Now I’d like to change that email address again. But I can’t, unless I want to change it on my test community. Because now I’m a Ning creator, and I have to go back to my personal community to change contact info.

At first, I thought I was being unreasonable. After all, I’m happy with my one email on Facebook, and my minimalist contact info on Twitter. But then I realized — Ning is making me use the same identity everywhere. It’s like having to use the same email on Facebook and Twitter and MySpace and you get the picture. My relationships are professional in some Ning communities, and personal in others. I’d like my emails to reflect that.

Now, this is undoubtedly not a common problem. Just like other social networking sites, the vast majority of Ning users aren’t creators. But two thoughts here:

• Ning does actually promote itself as a site where anyone can create a community.
• If you anger your power users, you lose them as soon as there’s a better solution.

I’m not the only one out there with similar issues. Ning, why aren’t you listening?