Getting started with grou.ps
May 10th, 2010 | Published by clare white in Blog, Step By Step Guides | 9 Comments
The announcement by Ning that they would be focussing only on paid-for services caused ripples amongst the many groups in Britain who had set up home on it. We have reviewed some of the alternatives in this post and are continuing to look at the useful links left in the comments.
There is no shortage of new services seeking to fill the space left by Ning’s free platform and now that the pricing structure has been announced, some sites may also be seeking sponsorship to stay where they are. Sites with larger memberships like Blurb Online are discussing amongst members some of the options for raising the subscription, including an annual fundraising event, a voluntary membership fee or a funding proposal to the council.
However, small and hyperlocal sites who don’t want to get into the business of collecting money should now be considering a move. Last week we contacted our centres and suggested they try Grou.ps as it is the closest in feel and features, as well as ease of setup, to Ning that we had tried so far. You can sign up for a new network here, or feel free to have a play with ours before committing your registration.
The group is easy to set up and customise and basically behaves just like a Ning. You can import RSS feeds from other blogs and in turn export them.
In addition to photos, videos and the social features available on Ning, grou.ps offer editable Wiki pages which are really useful for groups who want to collaborate on articles, help pages and other content remotely.
Export options for Ning sites are expected before the switch from the free service goes ahead, but in the meantime you might want to set up a grou.ps group and invite your members to give it a try. Let us know how you get on.
May 10th, 2010 at 12:40 pm (#)
Thanks for this, and for taking the time to evaluate grou.ps. Do they offer any kind of guarantee that they won’t do a Ning? If they’re going to ask for money eventually (and how will they sustain their operations otherwise?), then why should people abandon the communities they’d already started?
May 10th, 2010 at 3:33 pm (#)
Grou.ps say “Our goal is to offer some of our service for free – forever”.
However, if you’re not paying for a platform, you can’t really ask for any guarantees in return. Websites business models can change dramatically and even when you’re paying for a service there’s not a lot you can do if a platform goes bust. I’ve experienced this with a wiki platform I was using which disappeared one day leaving nothing but angry comments in the blogosphere.
To mitigate against this risk, it might be good practice to have a member of each community volunteering to keep an eye on the blog of their host and take backups of content and (with permission) membership mailing lists so that if something suddenly changes there is a way of contacting your members. It’s hard to lose communities that volunteers have worked hard to build up, but if there is a core team of people able to support their community in making adjustments to use a new site it should be possible to move without too much turmoil.
May 10th, 2010 at 3:34 pm (#)
Not sure the link to the FAQs worked there, they are here: http://grou.ps/groudotps/wiki/28172
May 13th, 2010 at 1:00 pm (#)
My personal opinion: if your online community is worth building, it’s probably worth paying for it. You can cover expenses by getting local businesses to contribute, as suggested by one group organizer here: http://forums.e-democracy.org/r/topic/2tA5xo0pm7tqCv23hIOwN8
May 13th, 2010 at 1:01 pm (#)
Hit Submit too soon. Forgot to say thanks for the research Claire.
May 21st, 2010 at 10:35 am (#)
grou.ps has a footer link to OpenID but I can’t see how to sign in with my OpenID – am I being dense or shall I go ask them?
The killer problem of Ning is the eyetest required to participate. Please don’t discriminate against disabled users.
May 21st, 2010 at 4:30 pm (#)
Hi Clare, thanks for your research. I think it is best to stay with ning. Anyway it has taken me hours to understand it the thought of trying another site is daunting.
By the way I love your training videos. Very good, easy to understand.
Annette
May 23rd, 2010 at 9:44 am (#)
Hi
I had a go on the Gro.ups site – the bit I really liked was ‘facebook connect’ – which made it so easy to join the gro.ups site using my facebook profile. I didn’t feel like I was having to sign up to a whole new social networking site – it felt more like joining another facebook group – took a few seconds and suddenly I was a member of the Talk Local Gro.ups site with my facebook photo and profile in place etc.
My question is – does Ning allow this seamless facebook connect option? When I joined a network on Ning yesterday I had to go through a whole sign up process – creating a new account, profile, photo etc – which was totally off-putting.
I would be prepared to pay for Ning if it offered this facebook connect option – as I think Ning is more customisable than Gro.ups in terms of look and feel. However, it is a real challenge to get people to sign up to a new social network on Ning – so the ‘facebook connect’ option would trump – and I would go for Gro.ups if this is the only place that offers this option.
Any advice?
Thanks
Jo
May 25th, 2010 at 7:35 am (#)
@annette albert – I’m glad you like the videos! And I think sticking with Ning is a good idea if you feel most comfortable with it, you’ve built up such a fantastic community there. You do need to bear in mind the deadline to switch off the free Nings around the end of July. It looks as though the Ning Plus package would be fine at about £140 a year, should be possible to raise that at a community picnic!
@jo it doesn’t go into detail (ie whether you need to be a programmer to make it work), but the Ning pricing details suggests you should be able to add Facebook Connect as well as Twitter sign-in: http://about.ning.com/announcement.