Introducing Social Integration and Top News

[Nick Barr]

We're excited to announce some new improvements to your Latest Activity Feature. These improvements are currently in Beta — instructions for enabling them on your site are at the bottom of this post.

First, you can now integrate your Twitter and Facebook Page items directly into your network’s Activity Feed. This is a great way to kick-start growth on your site and leverage your activity across the social web.

Second, we're introducing "Top News," a new way to view activity on your site. This feed of activity works in tandem with your current Latest Activity feed. It’s up to you how to curate your Top News. You have options to include your Admins' activity, as well activity from Featured Members. This lets you set up an automatically curated feed. It’s ideal for busy Ning Networks that want to spotlight top content that maybe needs to stick around in the activity feed for a bit longer than most activity.

You can see Social Integration and Top News in action in this screenshot:

 
 

How should you use it? Here’s a few ways you might want to use these new Activity Feed options.

Boost your activity early on

If you’re just getting started with a network, you might not have a lot of activity — yet! You might want to use Top News as a way to keep the most important content from you and your admins directly in front of the community in those early days. 

Focus on a high-profile NC

If your network revolves around one very important person — like ThisIs50 — you might want to use the Top News feed to spotlight what they are doing. You can even pull in Twitter and Facebook content to make this feed a one-stop destination for fervent fans.

Spotlight core content creators

Maybe your network has a core group of people who drive activity and contribute the most content. A few examples of networks like this that may be focused on publishing or broadcasting content:

• A group of mom bloggers who typically drive the conversation across a network when they post a new blog.
• A band using a network to keep their fans up-to-date about what each of the five band members are up to week-by-week.
• A community of practice that hangs on the word of a handful of experts in the field whenever they post.

Make your members stars

Maybe you just want to spotlight your featured members’ content. That may be the best way of all to use Top News. This could present a whole new way to think about what being featured means on your network.

Want to try it out?

To enable this beta feature on your Ning Network today, simply sign in to your site and navigate to Ning Labs. You'll see all the controls and options from there. Once we ship this feature to the entire Ning Platform, these controls will move to the Activity Settings page.

Of course, we’re open to hearing how you will use it, so let us know in the comments. 

 

[Patrick Chappelle]

Oh... Yes! Thanks for this Nick.

[solo]

thanks and awesome

[Writer Chick {Diane}]

Not working for me either!

 

[soaringeagle]

because its to9 an non existent example page go to your sites /main/ then add beta after the main

[Mat]

You have to be in Network creator account,

[Patrick Chappelle]

LMAO! That's because you're supposed to replace "EXAMPLENETWORK" with your network's url. 5 years on Ning and this is the first time I ever saw anyone ask this question. LOL

[Writer Chick {Diane}]

OMG.

(Here's your sign, Diane...)

 

LOL

 

[Patrick Chappelle]

Hahaha! I was actually responding to Andy, your response happened to get in under his before I could save my response.

[Jen]

Loving it! Setting it up now.

Thanks Ning!

=)

[Writer Chick {Diane}]

How can I feature ONE member's content?  

[RF]

I am looking for that too I want to do this:

Spotlight core content creators

Maybe your network has a core group of people who drive activity and contribute the most content. A few examples of networks like this that may be focused on publishing or broadcasting content:

[Eric Suesz]

You'll need to make them an Admin, Diane. Or, feature them. You can see the options on the administrative page for this.