Below is the press release:

GLAM MEDIA TO ACQUIRE NING, THE LEADING PLATFORM FOR CREATING SOCIAL NETWORKS AND OWNED BRAND FAN WEBSITES

Silicon Valley Pioneer Marc Andreessen to Join Glam Media’s Board of Directors

Acquisition Will Create One of the Largest Social Media Content Companies with over 240 Million Users & 100,000 Publishers — Creating the First Paid, Owned & Earned Media Platforms for Brands

Silicon Valley, CA — Sept 20, 2011 – Glam Media, Inc. (www.GlamMedia.com), the number one vertical social content platform company with the largest online global reach for women, today announced that it is acquiring Ning (www.ning.com), the leading online platform for building social websites, including more than 100,000 custom branded fan sites.

“Ning is the clear leader for creating custom social websites and communities. Acquiring Ning adds a natural extension to our social media platform, new distribution channels and a talented Silicon Valley team, all of which support our aim to connect brands with engaged, passionate audiences,” said Samir Arora, Chairman and CEO of Glam Media.
“With the addition of Ning, Glam Media will truly become the first next generation media company in the post-social world.”

Since launching the first social blog community in 2005, Glam Media has experienced tremendous success, growing from just seven publishers and 12 authors to more than 2,500 publishers and 4,000 authors globally today. The company has trusted relationships with more than 1,000 leading brand advertisers and is a Top 10 web property with more than 85 million monthly unique visitors in the U.S. and more than 200 million globally.

Combining Ning’s world-class technology and deeply engaging social platforms with Glam Media’s super premium advertising solutions and reach will accelerate the company’s vision of bringing brand marketers online by helping them to engage with passionate social communities across all digital mediums.
Glam Media together with Ning will set the standard for the future of media by providing their clients with the reach of portals, the deep connections and interests of Facebook, and the influence of trusted conversations.

“Social media is transforming the way brands are reaching their audiences. The Ning platform and its Network Creators, combined with the power of Glam’s advertising solutions, will ignite the delivery of our Brands+Social integrated programs at significant scale,” said Fernando Ruarte, CTO & EVP Platform & Products at Glam Media. “Together, Glam and Ning will address

important challenges that currently exist for marketers by enabling social media-activated brand campaigns to run in contextual environments that go beyond the few large social networking sites that exist today.”

Ning
Founded in 2004, Ning is the world’s largest custom platform for social communities and networks. The company has experienced explosive growth since it successfully moved to a subscription-based business model led by CEO Jason Rosenthal. Since 2010, Ning has increased the number of paying customers from 17,000 to more than 100,000 and grown its revenue by over 500 percent. Today, Ning has more than 100 million registered user social profiles and reaches more than 60 million monthly unique visitors. The company’s customers are the most active champions of brands, causes and organizations seeking to make an impact in the world using social media.

Ning makes it easy for brands of all sizes to build custom and powerful social brand fan pages and web sites as diverse as Linkin Park’s fan social network, Martha Stewart’s mentorship community, Scott Brown’s virtual campaign office and the collaborative hub for the Peace Corps. More than 50 percent of Ning sites are integrated with social applications such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+, which helps to amplify messages across each member’s social graph.
Ning will operate as a new business unit within Glam Media. Jason Rosenthal, Ning’s CEO, will join Glam as EVP Social Media & General Manager of Ning, and will be a member of the Glam Media executive team.

“Our passion at Ning has always been to make social and mobile core to every web experience, and to leverage the power of community to change the world
and drive value for customers,” said Jason Rosenthal, CEO of Ning. “Connecting our customers with super premium brand advertisers has been a core part of our vision from the earliest days of the company and joining with Glam Media — which shares our roots and belief in the power of social — delivers on that promise.”
Additionally, Marc Andreessen will join Glam Media’s board of directors, joining the top venture firm investors in Glam — Accel’s Thereisa Ranzetta and DFJ’s Tim Draper — as well as Co-Founder of Glam Media Fernando Ruarte, Dr. Marcel Reichart from print media leader Hubert Burda Media, and Glam Media Founder & Chairman Samir Arora. Marc is a Silicon Valley pioneer who created Mosaic, the first web-browser and was the co-founder of Netscape Communications. In 2009, Marc created the venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, with Ben Horowitz that invests in leading edge technology companies. He currently serves on the boards of Facebook, HP, eBay and other leading technology companies.

“Glam Media is one of the most dynamic companies in the digital media space, and I am excited to help guide their further expansion,” said Marc
Andreessen. “With the fusion of Ning’s leadership and social networking technology, and Glam’s solid stake in the world of digital advertising, publishing and content creation, there’s no limit to where we can take the company.”

Platforms and Products for Brands and Publishers

Ning joins Glam Media’s suite of next-generation advertising, social, and content platforms, which include:
GlamAdapt — super premium ad serving platform
GlamMobile — full-scale mobile advertising, content and social platform
GlamCreate — content creation management platform
GlamEnable — content platform to enable mobile sites and applications
GlamConnect — first social networking platform for professional authors and bloggers

The acquisition of Ning will allow Glam Media to provide its 2,500 publishers and 4,000 authors with even more innovative ways to connect, create and broadcast authentic content across multiple mediums and social streams — all in one place. Glam publishers will be able to leverage new services that enable them to grow their audiences on desktop, mobile and video and increase frequency, leading to higher levels of engagement.
Additionally, Ning Creators running active online communities will have new opportunities on desktop and mobile devices to monetize their sites and grow successful businesses.

[AllThingsD]

Rumor has it that AOL, Demand Media, and GoDaddy approached Ning with interest in an acquisition. The companies are interested in Ning’s technology, which has the ability to create custom social networks. Ning had 400% year-on-year revenue growth. They went from 17,000 to more than 100,000 subscribers with about 60 million monthly active users.

Ning raised over $119 million in funding over five venture capital rounds. On paper, the company is valued at over $500 million.

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.

Team,

When I became CEO 30 days ago, I told you I would take a hard look at our business. This process has brought real clarity to what’s working, what’s not, and what we need to do now to make Ning a big success.

My main conclusion is that we need to double down on our premium services business. Our Premium Ning Networks like Friends or Enemies, Linkin Park, Shred or Die, Pickens Plan, and tens of thousands of others both drive 75% of our monthly US traffic, and those Network Creators need and will pay for many more services and features from us.

So, we are going to change our strategy to devote 100% of our resources to building the winning product to capture this big opportunity. We will phase out our free service. Existing free networks will have the opportunity to either convert to paying for premium services, or transition off of Ning. We will judge ourselves by our ability to enable and power Premium Ning Networks at huge scale. And all of our product development capability will be devoted to making paying Network Creators extremely happy.

As a consequence of this change, I have also made the very tough decision to reduce the size of our team from 167 people to 98 people. As hard as this is to do, I am confident that this is the right decision for our company, our business, and our customers. Marc and I will work diligently with everyone affected by this to help them find great opportunities at other companies.

I’ve never seen a more talented and devoted team, and it has been my privilege to get to know and work with each and every one of you over the last 18 months.

We’ll use today to say goodbye to our friends and teammates who will be leaving the company. Tomorrow, I will take you through, in detail, our plans for the next three months and our new focus.

Thanks,
Jason Rosenthal

[TechCrunch]

An Update from Ning Chairman & Co-Founder Marc Andreessen

I’d like to update everyone on a change happening in our company today.

My fellow co-founder and Ning CEO Gina Bianchini has decided to step down after five and a half years of hard and terrific work. I support her wholeheartedly in her decision. Gina is handing the CEO duties over to Jason Rosenthal, who has been our Chief Operating Officer (COO) and head of business operations for the last year and a half. Nothing else is changing–I remain Chairman, the current management team remains exactly the same, and the Ning service continues unchanged.

I’d like to celebrate this moment by enthusiastically congratulating Gina on an amazing series of accomplishments in her time as CEO. Ning today is one of the world’s top social networking properties, with more than 2.3 million user-created Ning Networks and more than 45 million registered users, and is far and away the market leading social platform for interests and passions. Ning Networks span every area of human endeavor, from the arts to business, politics to social activism, and every other field you can think of. Over 5,000 new Ning Networks are created every day, and we’re adding a million new registered users every 12 days. This is all the result of Gina’s incredible dedication, as well as the phenomenal team she has built, since we first started the company.

I am also delighted to mention that Gina is becoming an Executive In Residence (EIR) at my new venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz–my venture capital partner Ben Horowitz and I are looking forward to being able to benefit from her insight and wisdom even more than before.

Gina says: “Now that we have built Ning to its current position in the market, I am ready to hand the reins over to Jason and the team to continue to execute on our vision and strategy. As a founder and large shareholder, I’ll continue to do everything I can to support and cheer on Ning in my new role!”

Let me also give you a thumbnail sketch of Jason Rosenthal, our new CEO. Jason has been a friend and colleague of mine for 15 years–we first worked together at Netscape, where Jason took on a sequence of crucial management roles from the very early days until we sold the company to America Online in 1998. Jason then became the first person my co-founders and I brought onboard when we founded Loudcloud in 1999–our internal nickname for him was “critical hire.” Jason and I then worked together there for nearly 10 years, until we sold that company (renamed Opsware) to Hewlett-Packard in 2007. Since that time, Jason has been immersed in Ning as a senior executive, head of business operations, and COO. Jason is a highly talented executive, manager, and leader, and I can’t think of anyone better to succeed my co-founder Gina as CEO.

Jason says: “Through Gina’s vision, leadership, and passion, she has taken the company from inception to our position today as the largest social platform for interests and passions. It’s been my privilege to work with her for the last 18 months and I look forward to expanding on the outstanding foundation she has put in place.”

Thank you very much for your time and attention, and we’ll see you on Ning!

Some of the applications include Hulu, WordPress, PollDaddy, Twitter Tracker, Qik, and Tungle.me. These applications have different skins in order to match the look and feel of the social network that they are being installed on.

Ning raised $15 million back in July which gave them a valuation of $750 million. What the company’s exit strategy is… I don’t know.

Ning currently has about 29.3 million registered users and over 1 million social networks.  The company was founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini.  Andreessen recently launched his own venture firm with former partner Ben Horowitz.  The venture firm that was started by Andreessen is called Andreessen Horowitz.

“The growth at Ning has been massive in the last year and, combined with the quality of the team and seeing that kind of momentum, it worked out well for us both,” stated Lightspeed Venture Partner Managing Director and co-founder Ravi Mhatre.

[via AllThingsD]