As reported on TECHCRUNCH.com

1) Ning has announced that it is ending it’s free products

2) Ning has cut over 70 people..nearly 40% of their staff

3) Ning will be forcing existing free networks to either make the change to premium accounts or move their networks elsewhere.

4) Ning has several different premium upgrades: include support (which has a $10/month and $100/month options for different service levels); Custom domains ($5 a month); Extra storage and bandwidth ($10 a month); Ad removal ($25 a month) and the ability to hide any trace that you’re running on Ning ($25 a month).

5) As a result, suspect to see quite a few active networks jump to whatever the cheapest premium option; Ning may not make it especially easy to port your data to a different service.

Whatever social media network option you choose, to stay with Ning or move on, try to keep downtime to a minimum.  Your online reputation must still be protected, no matter what the circumstances.