It was April 2010 when I wrote about Ning is cutting 40% of their staff and was stopping free social networks. At the time Ning had about 285,000 free account holders and they were hoping to retain about 9,000 paid users. Instead 50,000 paid social networks stuck around. And it has grown to 90,000 paid users ever since.

The social network platform company founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini has announced some major changes. The first change is that they are stopping free social networks from being created. Existing free networks will be forced to pay going forward.

Ning has raised a total of $120 million and received a valuation of $750 million as of last summer.

The second major change is that the company is reducing their staff by 40%. Below is the full email sent from Ning CEO Jason Rosenthal.

Ning CEO Gina Bianchini is stepping down from the CEO position at Ning.  Now she will become an executive-in-residence at VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.  Ning co-founder Marc Andreessen also co-founded the venture firm.  Ning COO Jason Rosenthal will take Gina’s position. Over the course of existence, Ning raised about $120 million in venture capital.  Below is a statement from the company [AllThingsD]: