Inviting Friends to Groups - VERY Difficult

[kopper]

I'm having a problem when trying to invite some of my friends to a group. I have over 2,000 friends on my profile (my network is closing in on 4,000 members, so roughly half are on my friends list), and when I go to "invite friends" to a Ning group, the little flash window that displays your friends is not showing all of them. There is a big section missing between the T's and the lower-case a's on the list. For example, I was just trying to invite a member by the name of Van Serpico to a group, and no matter how many times I tried to move the little slider up and down the bar, it would not pull up that section of the alphabetical listing of my friends. Is there any way that Ning can improve this function, so that it more closely matches that of Facebook, where when you go to invite friends to something, it shows you ALL of them, and also gives you an option to search for a specific one (so you don't have to scroll all the way through the entire list)? This would be a GREAT improvement, especially if they're going to start charging us.

What do you think?

Thanks,
kopper

P.S. I consider this a bug since it's not showing me all of my friends.

[Brian Floe]

This feature on Ning has never worked. It's not even a beta version, it's an Alpha version. I am hoping that Ning will leave the Flash arena for good and focus on html5, CSS3 and other goodies.

[kopper]

This is the thing that frustrates me most about Ning. Expect people to pay for an inferior product, or one that isn't even completely finished! That's just insane. The *easiest* thing to do should be invite people to your network. I'm trying to encourage participation in the various parts of my network (in this case, the groups) by inviting people to them who I think will benefit from being a member of them, and it doesn't freaking work! But they want me to shell out $50/month? It's absurd.

[Brian Floe]

Ning is the best choice out there. But we are simply pointing to the areas where they can get even better.

Almost ALL of Nings flash elements are horrible, horrible, horrible: the chat, the "choose from your friends list".
While having the best user friendliness on the web, stable and easy to use interface, their flash developers are clearly not on the same level. I don't want better flash developers, I want them to use other alternatives to flash.

Let's hope things get better.

[Jen]

@Kopper,
Your comment:
"I tried to move the little slider up and down the bar, it would not pull up that section of the alphabetical listing of my friends."

I do agree that this feature is very difficult, if not impossible to use. I don't agree with the harshness of your most recent reply.

:-)
Jen

[kopper]

Site functionality is the #1 thing. This has been an issue since I first started using Ning... and has gotten worse as more friends were added to my account. My main beef with Ning all along was that they would often spend too much time and resources introducing new features (gifts? come on) instead of fixing what's broken or, as Brian says, in Alpha. Will it be fixed before July? I'm not holding my breath. The "harshness of my most recent reply" is due to their lackadaisical approach to fixing bugs or known issues, and then expecting folks to pay for their service. I'll gladly pay for great service, but I won't waste my money on poor service.

[Brian Floe]

Thanks for responding Jen, and being honest about it. It's really such a relief to know that you as a company are aware of the situation rather than not.

At the same time Kopper is right. You have had a non functional way for all the members on your Ning networks to share content with their friends, for years now. If this is not a high priority bug ...well then this wouldn't be a social network.

I hope you fix this soon Jen, sharing content is what it's all about. I mostly just give up before even trying, cause it is utterly impossible. That has to be a problem, a big problem.

Thanks for your recent announcements, I am supporting this fully and think the future looks bright. We are just pointing out where things need to go from "not working" to "working".

[kopper]

Is this on the agenda for getting fixed/upgraded (sooner than later)? I would appreciate this very much, esp. since I just sent a $500 payment to Ning for my pro account!