Business, Featured - Written Wednesday, August 27, 2008 by Denis Hancock - 9 Comments

Ning vs. WidgetLaboratory and the challenges underlying ‘open’ platforms

The combination of Ning and WidgetLaboratory (WL) was a story that had wikinomics written all over it. The former is a platform that enables anyone to create their own social networks focused on anything they want, and they actively encouraged individuals and companies to innovate on top of the platform and make it even better. WL did just that, and in a big way – they sold a number of widgets (for around $30 / month) tied to the Ning platform, supporting somewhere in the range of 2,000 networks and 1,000,000 individuals. WL was the most popular widget creator on the platform.

If I was writing this post a week ago, it probably would have been a feel good story about wikinomics, but the wheels have recently fallen off the proverbial bus. This is a development equally worthy of exploring in relation to the challenges that come with embracing wikinomics principles – and particularly those that emerge when you only embrace a few of them. Of greatest interest to me – if more stories keep popping up like this, it could be a dramatic blow to more open, collaborative innovation processes. That would be a shame.

TechCrunch picked up the story on August 22nd, when Ning suddenly removed all of the WL widgets, without warning to anyone, from their network. This decision which clearly angered the company, as well as the thousands of customers who had spent time and money with WL in order to optimize their offerings. Based on the emails that WL has published on the web, this is the gist of Ning’s complaint:

Over the past few months, WidgetLaboratory’s applications have caused multiple and significant technical degradations to the Ning Platform. In point of fact, your code has broken numerous times and has negatively affected a large number of Networks in addition to the Ning Platform.

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