One month ago, Ning CEO and co-founder Gina Bianchini has stepped down. Jason Rosenthal was set to take her position as CEO. Ning chairman Marc Andreessen said the resignation was Bianchini’s decision and insisted “nothing else is changing” at the company…

Ning chairman Marc Andreessen with Bianchini, at the company's HQ in Palo Alto. | Photograph by Art Streiber

A month later, everything is changing at the company. Ning is shutting down free accounts on its platform of user-created social networks and culling 70 jobs, or 40% of its workforce. The end of free Ning.

Still, Ning raised an additional USD15m in VC funding only last July at a USD750m valuation to bring its total funding to USD119m. This is a lot of money to spend… but where is the vision for the new era of paid-Ning?

This is what I am expecting to hear from Jason Rosenthal on May 4.

For the last year we have been developing an online repository for Veria Public Library. The repository is going live this month. It is called Medusa and is based on the Dspace platform. The content comes from the digitised collections of the library but also integrates two external collections: the digital collection of the Monastery of St. John the Forerunner, that is located next to Veria (my hometown) and the digital collection of the Lyceum Club of Greek Women (from the branch of Veria).

With the precious help of Maria Tolika and Ioannis Trohopoulos, I have produced the following video to introduce the new service and spread the word. I hope you will enjoy it.

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