SocialGO Owners

It has recently come to our attention that many Network Creators are curious about migrating to SocialGO but are concerned that recent policy changes by the management of Ning may be followed by us. As CEO of Bright Things PLC, owner of the SocialGO platform, I feel that this is an opportune moment to bring some clarity and assurance to those who are seeking definitive answers.

1) If I develop a Niche network on SocialGO, do I truly "own" the content?

Yes. Unlike Ning, the SocialGO platform has been created from the outset to segregate the content of each network in a way that affords protection and control to each Network Creator. We are not a big network which has many smaller networks within it. As such, your Network data and membership are yours and yours alone, and are not connected in any way with other networks or with SocialGO as a whole. This means that there is no centralized "ID" or login required to first become a part of SocialGO as is the case with Ning and their "Ning ID". Likewise your network relationships will not be shared across other networks.

2) What if I ever decide to leave SocialGO?

Unlike Ning, the SocialGO platform has been created with data backup and transportability in mind. Because we are in the business of providing a social networking solution for you, and not for ourselves, it is imperative that we provide you with complete peace of mind. At any time, for any reason, you can request a backup of your full network data or can perform this backup yourself using our open API. Likewise, all of your members and content will go with you in the event that you wish to move, as we make no claims whatsoever to the same. You will never wake up one morning to find that we have taken advantage of your hard work to our own advantage.

3) We've heard similar things before from Ning, so why should we believe you?

The  SocialGO platform has been created with complete customer satisfaction as our primary goal. We are in the business of providing the best software solution to Network Creators at a reasonable price and are intensely focused on that goal alone. We have a logical business model in place and are not relying on the hope of advertising as a revenue source.

4) Why is SocialGO any different than Ning or the other platforms?

The primary reason is our laser-sharp focus on pleasing individual Network Creators. That is what we do, and nothing else. We want to provide the best turn-key combination of Network Creation tools around. Combine that with our Open-API, Widget Store, up-coming Template Store, Monetization Tools, and Concierge Service, and you can rest easy knowing that you will not find a better or easier solution for building your social network. Ning have done a great job marketing the idea of creating social networks and now many network creators are ready to take their networks and new ideas for networks to the next level.

5) So what are you offering me as an incentive to switch to SocialGO?

We recognize that many of you are suffering through a very traumatic time at the moment. For those of you who feel that you are ready to move to SocialGO, we wish to ease your transition and provide you with the tools to do so through our partners.

NETWORK OWNERS BILL OF RIGHTS

You have my Personal Guarantee that SocialGO will never change its Terms of Service in any way that claims ownership rights to your content or members

You have my Personal Guarantee that SocialGO will never aggregate your content or membership in any way unless or until you specifically request or authorize the same in advance, as may be the case should you wish your site to be included in a global directory of sites

You have my Personal Guarantee that, as a Premium Network Creator, you will be treated with respect and never separated from your content and membership. At all times you will have access to your site and have the right to backup or migrate the same without interference.


Trust is not a four letter word. Rather, it is the basis for building any valuable and long-lasting customer relationship.
We invite you to take a chance with us, and let us prove that you made the right choice.

Regards
Dominic Wheatley
CEO

Unfortunately, we have had to put in place some temporary limits to the 'Message All Members' function as some network owners have been abusing the system by using this function excessively. This abuse has resulted in some webmail providers tagging emails from SocialGO as spam, which then can prevent vital emails, such as 'reset password', from being received. Going forward, we are limiting all networks the ability to 'Message All Members' three times per 7 day period. In the future, we may also moderate the timing of when emails go out so we can manage peak periods. Please understand when using 'Message All Members' that the result may not always be instantaneous. This situation will be reviewed on a weekly basis. In the meantime, we will be implementing more permanent measures to control the abuse so that the majority are not effected.

We apologize for any inconvenience this temporary measure may cause.

In what little spare time I have, I've created a small Adobe Air application that enables network owners (and network Developers*) to view any members profile avatar, and more importantly, reset their password without having to go through the Forgot Password procedure.



It's a 0.7 release, and only really a small app which is an example of how to use the SocialGO API but may be useful for network owners which is why I've put it here.

I'm not a Flex uber expert, but it seems to work. Any questions about the source for this, I can help with pointers.

You will need the Adobe AIR runtime already installed. If you've installed one of Widget Laboratory's apps, like their network importer, then you should be able to install the Little Profile Viewer, if not go to: http://get.adobe.com/air/ first to install the AIR runtime.

Finally, download the AIR app from:
http://blog.mike-martin.com/socialgo/sogo-little-profile-viewer.air

It doesn't do much and there may be bugs. So use at your own risk. It's not in any way supported by anyone, ever.

Ok phew! So we have made progress with page speeds and quite a few of the issues that you guys have reported. Page speeds have gone down by 95% in peak times and there are more improvements to come as we improve the platform and infrastructure. The SocialGO team have been working round the clock, sleeping in the office and generally doing everything humanly possible to get your networks back the way you want them.

There are a few bugs remaining which we are working hard on and we are pushing updates regularly to fix these. Major fixes where posted today and more to come tomorrow.

A big thank you for your patience during this time. We know it has been a bumpy ride for the past month and are putting in place infrastructure to cope with current and future growth.

Keep checking this blog for updates!

Alex

You probably sick of us saying this, but we have put in a load of new servers overnight.  To do so we had to take the networks down for a period - sorry.

So far we are seeing good speed increases.  Let's see what happens when we hit peak times later on.

Stivi

Guys,

We are just doing an upgrade on admin, so it will be down for a few hours.  Check back every periodically to see when it is back up.  Sorry for the inconvenince.

Thanks
Stivi

Hi All,

We have had a load of new servers commissioned over night to meet the ever growing demand for SocialGO.  You will hopefully notice some speed improvements especially during the peak periods.

We are looking to improve things even further with more servers going in over the next 48 hours. 

Thanks to all the beta networks for your great feedback, it really is helping us focus on what you need and fast track the development of the platform.

Stivi

As the traffic continues to grow at an unbelievable pace we are aware that many networks experiancing slow page loads at peak times. We are working on this 24 hours a day, scaling and optimizing the system during BETA to cope with the growth.

During the next day or so we will be adding a new bank of servers and there will be some downtime as the core servers are upgraded.

Thanks again for your patience!

Hi All,

Today we are commissioning the new video servers and to do so we have had to suspend video playing for a few hours.   You can still upload videos during this period. 

Please check back in a few hours for the latest update.

Hopefully you will enjoy much better speeds when these servers are in place.

Alex

Thanks to everyone for the feedback on the intermittent uploading photos/videos/music problem.  We are totally focused on the problem at the moment.  No holidays for us I'm afraid!

We did a lot of work on it yesterday and made significant progress.  In fact some of the uploading problems that you may have experienced yesterday were the result of us having to test a few things in the live environment in order to simulate the huge server loads currently being experienced.  While we made big improvements we have a few more things to sort today and hopefully everything will be back on track soon.