Friday, August 22, 2008

Ning not responding to any efforts to restore your products

We have made attempts today to contact Ning and get any explanation or official statement at all as to why WidgetLaboratory was terminated, or what "Terms of Service" were violated. Ning has removed all of our accounts and has blocked our IP addresses from using their servers at all, so that we cannot even follow the postings on the Network Creator's Forum, let alone respond or give our own facts or details.

The only channel we have available at the moment is through Ning's Legal Counsel, Robert Ghoorah. At this time, we can only state that we have communicated very clearly to Mr. Ghoorah that we have a full and complete technical and communication record that begins from the moment we started our company on Ning's platform back in November of 2007.

Without revealing any further information that would prevent a graceful resolution of this matter and a restoration of "normality" to your networks, we can state as follows:

WidgetLaboratory has provided an eight-month history of almost "immediate" response to any and all technical issues raised by any one at Ning. We have responded at 4am on a weeknight, and on Christmas Eve, New Years, and Fourth of July weekend. Regardless of when or where, we have always provided an immediate and complete response and resolution for ANY issues raised by Ning that would relate to any "technical" issues with our products on the Ning platform. We have also received the brunt of Ning's "own" technical problems and absorbed blame for issues that never had anything to do with our products, but were inherent bugs in Ning's own architecture.

There were NEVER any warnings or notices by Ning as to any violations of Terms of Service due to Networks being "negatively impacted", as there has not been any such negative effect. It is very sad and further ironic to us then, that without one ounce of proof or substantiating evidence, Ning is now making allusions to the fact that WidgetLaboratory was terminated (as well as our own personal web sites on Ning) for the following reason:

"Unfortunately, this is a black and white issue of WidgetLaboratory violating our Terms of Service after multiple warnings and negatively impacting the Ning Platform. We had to act and did so...the answer won't be to bring back WidgetLaboratory. Our Terms of Service are there for a reason. Please know we did not enter into this decision lightly."

WidgetLaboratory CATEGORICALLY denies that this is true. As of 10pm CDT last evening, our CTO was on the telephone with Ning's Senior VP of Engineering (Jay Parikh) in an effort to provide moral and technical support after Jay suggested that he and his team were exhausted from all of the work that they were having with the recent "update" by Ning to their own platform.

We will continue our efforts to encourage Ning through their legal counsel to resolve this matter amicably, and in a way that would be beneficial for all concerned, especially all of you... our mutual customers.

Thank you for your ongoing support and kind letters. We will continue our efforts to get Ning to communicate with us in a manner befitting a company that has claimed from it's inception to be the "place" to build widgets and solutions, rather than one that is acting capriciously or without any concern for its own customers and third-party developers.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is inexcusable that Ning did this without warning to you and our networks.
We laso were NEVER told that they impacted our systems by shutting you down leaving hunred of links floating!
Then they shut down stmp so we cant even fix tabs hanging in mid air etc.
this is inexcusable on Nings part. They are costing us members AND DESTORYED our data. Our lawyers are looking into this.

Zohra Boelhouwers said...

Well you still have the domain www.widgetlaboratory.com right? Why not host the widgets on your own website or a similar site like kickapps.com or this blog?

Or maybe better, why not work for ning as a sub-section of theirs?

You guys have the know how....

Goodluck ,


Zohra

Anonymous said...

Spence, give us some options on social sites to move to. I cant trust that if I pick another set of tools (and what fool would offer that for Ning) that they wont shut them down

Zohra Boelhouwers said...

VOTVC: i suggest the guys overhere start their OWN platform and implement all their cool widgets INTO it so we can click it from a tab or checkbox :-)

But i guess this will be a huge huge project....

Unknown said...

Definitely an example of very bad management form Ning. Thy had to communicate to all SN that WL products may be damaging to the system and may be removed.
Totally unprofessional and arrogant statement from Ning.

Web-Runner said...

I can't stay without answer...I create http://widgetlab-friends.sixgroups.com/

A friendly Community to help (as we can )WL to survive ...

I'm not from WL...just an happy customer...Until yerteday ,and the Ning's Crime...

In this Community we can share information ,ideas ,and prepare our response...

I need some volonters to help me in this friendly work...