Gina Bianchini's abrupt March departure from Ning was a surprise; in two years she'd taken the social networking company to an "eye-popping" $750 million valuation from just $170 million. Did she do it honestly?
It's time for Facebook to unfriend its 24-year-old college dropout CEO. Mark Zuckerberg had a decent run. But he's the wrong person at the wrong time to lead his social network through its growing pains.
Marc Andreessen has been invited to join the board at eBay. The online auction company has been struggling of late, never mind CEO John Donahoe's assertion that what's bad for the American economy is good for eBay. Andreessen, probably smelling the stink blowing in from the rising tide, stockpiled enough venture…
"My engineers say, 'We're normal people too.' And then I have to have a conversation with them about why they're not." — Ning CEO Gina Bianchini, speaking at MIT's EmTech conference about her workers' lack of a feel for what interests the social-network tool's users.
CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — "That is not my presentation, although it would be very sexy if it were," said Ning CEO Gina Bianchini, as she took the stage at MIT's EmTech conference here, with someone else's Windows desktop blown up on a screen behind her. Alas, her presentation, a canned version of Ning's stump speech, was not…
Comedian Hasan Minhaj recently left his old job at social networking startup Ning to persue a career in standup comedy and writing. Pointing out to the crowd at the Punchline last night where he was hosting, Minhaj explained that his old boss, Ning founder Marc Andreessen, was worth $5.6 billion. So why work startup…
PALO ALTO — Thursday night in a Crowne Plaza hotel, with an Elks Club banquet roaring next door, Netscape cofounder, Ning king, and Facebook board member Marc Andreessen sat down with Portfolio writer Kevin Maney for a Churchill Club interview. This wasn't exactly what Andreessen had planned. Back in May, he wrote on…
Our summary of social-network operator Ning's tiff with a widgetmaker sparked a vicious name-calling riot in the comments. Elvenjewel became today's featured commenter by providing a helpful summary of the fracas, which proved more interesting than the Ning dispute:
Marc Andreessen's Ning is a platform for thousands of social networks. Mick Balaban and Spencer Forman's WidgetLaboratory builds and sells add-ons for operators of those social sites. Or did, until August 22. That's when Ning general counsel Robert Ghoorah wrote Forman to say that WidgetLaboratory would be booted…
It's not Ning's porn-sharing communities, Facebook's co-ed antics, and MySpace's ninja sex angel users that prevent these social networking sites from making as much money off ads as hoped. It's the issue of getting quality attention with each insertion, writes Bryant Urstadt for the MIT Technology Review. He…
NEW YORK — VCs continue to invest irrationally, Spark Capital partner Dennis Miller said at EconAds yesterday. He said too many VCs invest in "rock star" founders as though they are "a call option on a bright future." Others too quickly buy the hype from hard-selling founders. Too many company's are getting too high…
By offering a suite of tools for websites to add a social network layer, Google isn't challenging established players like Facebook and MySpace, but instead sites offering customizable, turnkey social networks. In other words, look out, Marc Andreessen: Larry and Sergey just declared themselves the Microsoft to…
Few people outside Silicon Valley have heard of Roelof Botha. But the former CFO of PayPal is famous here. His two claims to fame: negotiating that company's $1.5 billion sale to eBay, and later, as a partner at Sequoia Capital, investing in YouTube and quickly flipping the startup to Google for $1.65 billion. Is it…
Digg cofounder Jay Adelson is now asked by the likes of Kara Swisher how he'd fix big media companies, as in this clip. But there was a time when he barely knew what to do with his own Internet startup, Equinix. That tale and more covers 54 out of 294 pages in Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good, Sarah Lacy's…
Netscape cofounder and propagator of porn social networks Marc Andreessen will join Facebook's board of directors, Kara Swisher reports. Andreessen will join current board members Accel Partners Jim Breyer, Clarium Capital's Peter Thiel, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Andreessen is the chairman of Ning, a company…
Ning founder Marc Andreessen is already on the record about Microsoft's proposed takeover of Yahoo: He thinks it will likely go through, and turn out to be a good deal. It's a remarkably sanguine take for someone who saw Netscape bought and destroyed by AOL. In a thorough analysis for which he dragooned two…
Every time Marc Andreessen steps away from his desk, disaster abounds. For the father of the Netscape browser, the creator of the Web as we know it, the legendary barefoot geek from the magazine covers, expectations are way too high. And so the disappointments pile up. The Andreessen of today is not the Marc we…
Here's how things usually work: Have a major outage, then fire your operations guy. At Marc Andreessen's Ning, the social-network Web host best known for its porn sites, things run a bit differently. On Monday, CEO Gina Bianchini fired VP of operations Alexei Rodriguez. On Wednesday, the company saw all of Ning's…
A Fast Company cover story isn't the only inexplicable gift social-network startup Ning has received. After raising $44 million last July, Ning has raised another $60 million, cofounder Marc Andreessen reluctantly announced. (A regulatory filing uncovered by VentureBeat forced the news out of him.) Why the…
Here's what you really need to know about Ning, according to Fast Company writer Adam Penenberg. Its chairman, Netscape cofounder Marc Andreessen, has an egg-shaped head. Its CEO, Gina Bianchini, who posed for Fast Company's cover in a tank top, is a "hottie." And Ning, a provider of websites for niche social…
