A bunch of folks seized on the point that Adam calls out in his post, that we took the Ning sign down to keep folks from randomly dropping in. Somehow that’s equated to not wanting to talk to our customers. Still trying to figure that one out. If we took the firewall down around our office network and took the encryption off our wireless network would that help also? Are people randomly dropping by Cingular and Microsoft just to chat the folks up?

Somewhere along the line apparently “solving problems in a way that delivers value to your customers” was replaced with “talking to a whole bunch of bloggers on whatever schedule they feel like keeping” as the core tenant of building a company. Maybe that’s the real definition of Web 2.0? The personal network as platform? The blogosphere as platform? Ahhh, yes, it all makes sense now. I was misreading the “network” in those definitions as “Internet”. Stupid me.

If you have something you as a customer would like to tell Ning about, there’s a bunch of email addresses on the About Us page, the Developer Discussion board, an IRC channel, and a mailing list. We love to hear from you. If you really feel compelled to show up at the office on your own schedule, don’t be too surprised if I show up at your house unannounced as a “customer of your blog” to discuss things with you as well.