This license gives them the rights over any content we submit. They only need to ask for a non-exclusive electronic right to archive, promote, newsletter, publicly perform and publicly display such Content for the purposes of making it available to the general public.

I have a problem with terms that state they can create derivative works from the content that I submit.

That is unfair to Bloggers!

If you recall Myspace change their terms not to long ago because they were unfair to artists.

Thanks so much for your great post and set of questions.

Here’s a couple of points:

Intellectual Property Ownership – You Own It

In terms of intellectual property, you own what you do on your network. I’d encourage you to look at our terms of service at http://www.ning.com/about/tos.html. Our business goal is to offer advertising on the free social networks running on the Ning service. We don’t need to “own” anything except the right to run those ads.

Internationalization – We Have It

We are fully internationalized and people are already creating networks in other languages. You can see how to do it here: http://docs.ning.com/page/page/show?id=492524%3APage%3A6. Sampa Network at http://sampanetwork.ning.com is a good example of a Portuguese language network someone created.

Data Privacy Laws – You’re Right

Nicole, you’re right that we operate in the U.S. Here’s our privacy policy: http://www.ning.com/about/privacy.html. We certainly aren’t trying to cut off the option of running under European Privacy Laws.

Domain Name Mapping – We’re Moving to the Moveable Type Model

Agreed that mirroring isn’t ideal and that’s how we do it now. We’re looking to make this change to the Moveable Type model in the coming months.

Uptime – We Care About More than the U.S.

This was a by-product of what I described here: http://blog.ning.com/2007/03/tan_rested_and_ready.html.

Again, thanks for your feedback and post. We really appreciate it. If you have any additional questions for me, by all means drop me at ceo(at)ning(dot)com.

Thanks!

Gina

Nice analysis, I did a lesser one here but basically came to similar conclusions (like you we set up our first site a year ago). I’ve linked to yours in my post now. A. Like you I suspect the ning business model will have to change, as there are so many open platforms now.

After building our website in Drupal (our blogsite uses Serendipity), I’m not sure I would use it for a SocNet.

By the way, there are a lot of us worried about data integrity and privacy in the UK as well…..

Interesting analysis. Data and control are going to be important going forward.

I’ve created a list of white label social networking apps, you can see it here
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/02/12/list-of-white-label-social-networking-platforms/