IP4 and Friends Function

[Greenman]

I've started a new topic for this as there is quite a bit of discussion around this piece of functionality in and amongst other threads. Before I start, I think 4.0 is fantastic and I would definitely like to upgrade sooner rather than later.

So the purpose of this thread is that the 'friends functionality has been removed from IP4'.

I've read a number of times that friends have been changed to followers - this isn't the case as they serve 2 totally different purposes and it's really important to take that into consideration.

• Followers has been added to IP4 as a new piece of functionality (twitter style)
• Friends has been removed as it was considered not to be important

The 2 shouldn't be confused as being better or worse - they serve 2 different audiences and need to be dealt with entirely separately.

Followers is for open content and friends is for private content. I've also read that one of the reasons for removing friends is for SEO and allowing google to index all content. If we are suggesting that all content should be open to the world, that's a very dangerous position to take for a community platform. The whole ethos of good content is that it is written for a particular group of people. For some audiences that content can be shared to the public without restrictions. For another audience, it may be of a more private nature and needs to be restricted to your own community with privacy controls (the friends function). This is precisely why Facebook has the friends feature. People don't want their photos being publicly available - they are sharing them with their own community of friends who they know and trust.

Every forum community is unique - we are not trying to clone Twitter or Facebook as social networks. We are serving a niche group of people interested in a niche topic and for that reason, it's important to have followers and friends with privacy settings over content.

IP.Gallery

My understanding from Invision is that 'followers' does not apply to IP.Gallery. It's for this module that the friends function has left a huge hole. It is possible to select who you can share an album with. However, if I have 5 albums and I want to share them with 50 other 'selected' users which is the case for many IP3 communities, I would have to manually do this 250 times. Clearly, this type of UX is not going to go down very well with our users.

IP4 upgrade installer

The other issue concerns the IP4 upgrade installer. It will set all your albums to private rather than keep them open to those users who were previously in your friends list - again, this is really not a satisfactory result of an upgrade. At the very least, the upgrade installer needs to carry the same settings through so that the community can carry on as before. One other solution that could work, is a contact list or address book that you can tag an album too - this could be a good alternative if the friends function doesn't materialise.

Friends and 4.1

There has been a mention that there will be some kind of friends module as part of 4.1. It would be great if Invision could clarify whether this is the case and what it may look like considering it is preventing a number of communities from upgrading.

Different audiences

Every forum is different as it depends on the audience and how the technology is being used. For a community that does use the 'friends' function, there is now a hole that prevents the possibility of upgrading. For those companies who are running a business on the back of a forum, it's a difficult decision (especially on paid software).

I would like to see the friends function kept as per IP3. It doesn't need to be expanded upon or even improved. If Invision want to take IP.Boards in a different direction, that's all good and I welcome change and innovation. However, it would seem to make sense to keep a piece of functionality that is so important to certain communities and with IP4, there is no real workaround (except not upgrading).

To summarise, I'm ready to upgrade to IP4 but until there is a solution for the missing friends function, it's no longer a viable platform. If this changes, I will be the first to upgrade to what looks like an excellent piece of software and a fantastic upgrade.

Would be great to get some feedback on this area from the IP community and Invision.

Many thanks

[TracyIsland]

Hi -

Thanks for posting a very insightful topic.  I know that all members of the Invision community are supposed to address the points in the original posters reply and simply offer his or her opinion on the merits of the topic.  I cannot.  Our community is different. Perhaps that is my point: every community is different.  It is our feedback that IPS restore the Friends functionality to allow every community to have the greatest leeway to implement their own functionality for following content and friends.

We use a slightly different approach to following content.  Our initial member registration system as well as our member profile updates determine what content is followed, by default.  Our community is structured in two ways: geographic and demographic.  Depending on the country and the demographic preferences either initially provided or updated, the member has their default auto-follow settings defined and enabled for forums, for IP.Content articles, for social groups, for calendars, and for classifieds.  Additionally, if a member decides to unfollow a forum or another IP application, that setting remains in place and overrides any further default setting for that particular forum or calendar, even if they change countries for two years and then return to that country of residence later.  Of course, our members can manually follow any other forum or other content themselves

These auto-follow settings are for the calendar only, for the forum only, for the ip.content article categories only, and for classifieds categories only.  When our members log in, they only see notifications on new topics, new calendar events, new classified listings, new articles but they are not automatically following all of the items inside. That we leave up to them.  We just want them to know about new content in their area of the world and in their areas of interest.  We also have a 'my-page' that shows a list of unread application categories, indicated by a (#).  Based on our observation and feedback from members, we have set our default notifications settings to only be online only.  Our community member do not like a lot of email notifications.  So even if the members disable the online notifications, they will still have their 'my-page' summary of unread new application content.

For us, the Friends feature is all about showing the status of our Friends on our 'My-Page.'  We show which of our members' friends are online, which of our members' friends have a birthday today, which of our members' friends have posted a status update, and which of our members' friends have added an entry in their blogs.  We could extend this functionality to include which of our members' friends have added an image to their personal gallery.  Hopefully this illustrates how we use Friends and why we would very much like it to be restored for 4.0.  One note about the status update block: it really doesn't work.  It is an acknowledged quirk by IPS - the status update block shows everyone's status update, even if they are not Friends.

- Brian

[opentype]

 

I've read a number of times that friends have been changed to followers - this isn't the case …

It is. “Changed to” in this context means that the friend data is taken to built the follower data. Two friends become followers of each other, so they have been “changed” to followers. 

But apart from these semantics, I agree to everything you say. It’s a good summary of what has been discussed for months now. 

[Myr]

I agree with the original poster.  When I mentioned this change on our site's tech blog, I had a lot of blowback and a lot of PM's on the topic.  Fortunately for our site, we have to wait for our custom software to be updated before we can migrate to 4.0.  I'm hoping a few of these types of issues get addressed in that timeframe.  

[SJ77]

It is. “Changed to” in this context means that the friend data is taken to built the follower data. Two friends become followers of each other, so they have been “changed” to followers. 

But apart from these semantics, I agree to everything you say. It’s a good summary of what has been discussed for months now. 

​Ralf, with all due respect, I believe you're missing the point here. How certain users came to be following certain other users is immaterial. The man is saying that "friend" functionality for all intents and purposes is no longer available and he's correct. Friends <> Followers

[opentype]

​Ralf, with all due respect, I believe you're missing the point here.

No I don’t. I just made a side note about semantics. 

The man is saying that "friend" functionality for all intents and purposes is no longer available and he's correct. 

​I did not object to that. No one is.