Activity Feed improvements: Twitter search in social feeds & New Activity indicator

[Eric Suesz]

As part of our most recent release of Activity Feed improvements, we asked Network Creators to weigh in on a few things they might want us to tackle next with this ongoing project. We're here to announce a few new things we've now added: Twitter search in the Activity feed and a New Activity indicator.

Twitter Search in Social Feeds

Want to pull in relevant tweets from outside of your network? Do you use Twitter to follow special hashtags that might be of interest to your members? Want to start using unique hashtags that you create on Twitter and pull those into your Activity Feed? All of these are possible with this new Twitter integration. How does it work?

• Enter a word, hashtag or phrase into one of the two boxes we've provided in the Activity Feed Social Feeds section, and tweets will begin to pour into your Activity Feed.
• We're currently using 'Top' search results (twitter.com/#!search/ning), as opposed to 'All' search results (twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/ning)
• The more specific your words and phrases can be, the better. For example, if you enter "jazz" your feed will be virtually unusable and full of content that's not relevant to your network. If you refine that to "dixieland", you'll see better results. If you go even further and specify "#dixieland" you'll only see things people have explicitly tagged with that word or phrase. Experiment!

New Activity Indicator

A lot of Network Creators love the idea of providing a way for members to see new content pop up in the Activity Feed. Good news. Now, you can.

As you spend time on the page, you will notice that your Activity Feed will show an indicator that new items are available. Click that button, and the feed will refresh. Right now, we're loading in the most recent 30 items, but we may change that over time as we monitor how this is being used.

Try them out! 

Those are two things we have for you to try out. The Twitter updates are available with the Top News addition to the Activity Feed, which is available in the Ning Labs section of your dashboard. The New Activity Indicator is standard issue and will show up for everyone across the platform. We hope these new additions give you more flexibility and keep your members clicking and sharing!

Note for the CSS savvy

As part of this change, we needed to change the CSS class a bit. We had to rename the "More" button CSS class. It is now identified as "xg_show_activity_items". If you have styled the More button (or want to style this new activity indicator) in a custom way, you'll want to update your code. 

[Kenneth]

All my ning-sites are in danish and I can not change "new item"  in Language Editor.  Please secure your coming  updates for us "foreingers" before release - Thanks

[Stefaan Boel]

Indeed, same issue here, wanted to change that today...not possible...strange...

[Eric Suesz]

Hey, Kenneth. Good point. This is a rare case where we aren't able to update it across the board because of a technical detail. Sorry for the inconvenience. We'll try to get this fixed up for you soon.

[Alex]

The ability to change this in the Language Editor should be ready to go early next week.

[Robert Paul]

+1

[Kris]

I like the new activity indicator

Twitter Search is just another way for spammers to show up on your site not to mention you would be driving traffic away from your site and not deeper into it.

[Eric Suesz]

It could be. I guess it depends on how you use it. I think that a clever hashtag could be useful. Looking forward to seeing how people use this. 

[soaringeagle]

Okay this is interesting, I've had only one spammer in the last six months, and he posted a where to buy unique gifts posts. Then tweeted it. I deleted Twitter posts Reference from the top news, An hour later it was back. Is that common for spammers to tweat their spam?

[Tiffany Lane-Crane]

I'm loving the New Items Indicator!!! Re: the Twitter Feed, I'm on Twitter quite a bit and havent yet see add to my network. Am I missing something? 

[Bruce Gaynham]

Hi Tiffany. Have you activated it under the ning labs section of your network?

[Tiffany Lane-Crane]

Okay so Bruce, I have to say I'm having a "duh" moment. I'd only integrated Twitter onto my network, but I hadnt gone back in and added this Twitter Search option. Thank you very much sir! Do you have this added to your network, if so, how is it working for you so far? 

[Bruce Gaynham]

Pleasure, and No - in two minds about adding it to our feed. Will wait a while and see what the feedback is like from the Creators...