Social Network Features In Forum Software

[leefish]

Well, I think being able to make it easier to use the board is the reason to have options added to core. If having a login integrated with a 3rd party software makes it easier to have members join then I would consider it, but as an option to switch on rather than a fixed feature. I think we see in the member profile today the results of adding in 3rd party options as a fixed feature rather than an option. I had never heard of ICQ until I used mybb. I would not be against offering users a way to share views of their other activity on other websites via a plugin on profile, but my interest is people posting on my site, not using my site as a point to jump off to posting elsewhere.

What I do think is a good idea is notifications about board activity

Here is an example: I did not have many posts or threads on my board. I had a lot of visitors, and members returning but not posting. I installed a plugin (unread posts) and have seen posting activity increase from an average of 15 posts a day to about 45. We have not had a lot more members, it is just easier for the members to see posts they have not read. I know some MYBB users say there is the new posts thing but that is unreliable - it depends on last login and so members were missing posts.

From a users perspective all the plugin really offers is a link in the header to all unread posts and a number to say how many. Now, given this kind of increase in posting with a plugin reporting how many unread posts from all areas, I wonder what a notification to say that a subscribed forum or thread has had new posts would do? The information is there in MYBB (there are subscribed forums and threads) but it requires the user to go make a trip to the user cp. Most users cannot be bothered to click through like that - ideally I would like that to also be a notification in the header - "You have x new posts in your subscribed threads/You have y new posts in your subscribed forums" and on click rather than dragging the user off to the userCP it takes the user to the list of posts.