Many start-ups say they want to publish a public product roadmap. Few do.
There are several reasons why companies don’t do this: It might reveal too much to the competition. It might force commitments and limit flexibility. It may feel like a burden. Plus, don’t customers like to be surprised when they sign in and spot a shiny, new feature? Under-promise and over-deliver, right?
There are several ways to look at it. But there’s one extremely good reason a company like ours should publish a product roadmap: Quite simply, it will make our customers happy. Making customers happy is a core part of our business.
As our CEO put it recently, one of our big goals for 2011 is to delight our customers. To that end, we’re hoping you’ll be delighted that we’re delivering on our promise of transparency and openness and releasing the Ning Product Roadmap.
We understand that the level of communication our customers want about Ning the product are varied. Our most strident Ning Creators would like a seat at every engineering meeting (and maybe even veto power). Other Creators don’t want to be bothered with an email newsletter. We think the key to satisfying as many people as possible is two-fold: 1) Provide different options for communication so every customer can have as much or as little involvement and detail as they prefer, and 2) be as open and transparent as possible about what we’re planning.
The Ning Product Roadmap is one part of this ongoing communication, but we’ve added a few more to ring in the new year that you may or may not have noticed:
- Beta Page: If you’re itching to try out the features that are coming soon, you might just find them on the new Beta Page of your Dashboard. We’ll release what we can for those who are curious, and you can choose to try them out. Or wait until they’re officially official. It’s up to you.
- Ning Announcements: You don’t have to be a member of the Creators Network to stay in-the-know. We recently put a an RSS feed of our Creators Network Announcements directly on your Dashboard. Every time you sign in, you’ll have access to headlines, which you can browse and dismiss — or go check out if you’re curious.
- Known Issues: We’ve dedicated a page on the Creators Network to tracking some of our most important bugs. Some Ning Creators have asked for more visibility into those types of technical details, so we’re providing it.
We think the benefits of being open and communicative with our customers will make us go farther and faster in the long run. We already have what many social-media-savvy businesses strive for but don’t often achieve: a thriving customer community where people are encouraged to pipe up and share their feedback, advice, and opinions. Now, to complement that, we’ve charted a public course with milestones to hit along the way. By setting product expectations, and then following through on them, we’re confident we’ll create an even more enduring customer-company partnership.
And, most importantly, we’ll make our customers happy.
2 Responses to “Introducing the Ning Product Roadmap”
I think the most important part of this is that, Ning should design their own features that has never been seen by anyone. Features that are eye catching, continuously improving on the current feature that have been published that are currently not working to a 100% capacity.
I think most network creators would like a revenue, workable, and comprehensive features that would enable network creators the ability to pay their network fees in the future. The purpose of most website is to generate revenue, and generating revenue means providing high quality products, and contents. We can not do this with just any how features.
Here are my proposals:
1. A comprehensive, high quality Video Chat room with all capabilities, if it means giving people( Members)options. Options to use a not too comprehensive room, and also give other members the ability to subscribe to a more advanced chat room with video and music and other features. Give members good reasons why they should subscribe to your network/chat room. We are no longer in the CAVE MEN ERA;people need something new. Check out YouTube, they keep improving and improving. This is how Ning system should operate.
2. Video capabilities: HD Video capabilities. There should be an options here. Give people abilities do do live HD Video capabilities, and this should fall under the categories of members who wishes to subscribe to your network and make a broadcast. Probably an announce, a birthday greeting, wedding announce, engagement announcement, etc. Give people options, imagination is what is lacking here, ning team must and should continue to stretch their imagination beyond facebook, twitter,yahoo,youtube,linkedin, vevo, and many more.
These are just my suggestions for now.I know other people have almost similar ideas but these ideas must be collected together. Think beyond your capacity, you are limiting your brain power. Do what has never be done before by anyone or any social network out there. Let have live HD Video capabilities ( a paid subscription option).
Good luck guys, I know it’s difficult to please everyone!
By andy johnson on Jan 30, 2011
Greetings!
I am almost delighted with new Ning approach please keep up the good work!
Andy points good suggestions but not sure if aim to be winning over FB or twitter will be accomplished with more imaginative features, in a `I have more imagination` type of war…
The uniqueness of Ning is the group so Ning should try to be a more groupware platform.
I would target the `event organization` features, making almost impossible for anyone organizing an event not having a ning network to support it.
We would welcome an event promoters group with Ning so we could start to share ideas.
As I said keep up the good work!
By nunesdea on Feb 3, 2011