Live now! Leaderboards for deeper engagement

[Nick Barr]

I'm excited to introduce Leaderboards for your Ning Network. Leaderboards are ordered rankings of the top members and content on your Network, and they're powerful for two reasons:

• For Creators, Leaderboards make it easy to discover and promote the best of your Network.
• For members, Leaderboards spark friendly competition, establish reputation, and encourage deeper, more persistent engagement.

With today’s launch, you have the power to make use of Leaderboards in the perfect way for your Network. You can view the latest trends on your Network Dashboard, add Leaderboard pages to your top-level tabs, and even add a Leaderboard module to your Main Page.

Plus and Pro networks have full access to Leaderboards, and Mini networks have a limited Dashboard view. Details below!

Smart, Fresh, Flexible

As you explore the new Leaderboards feature, you'll find that it’s smart, fresh, and flexible.



Smart: On Ning, Leaderboards make use of a brand-new engagement system that's going to continually get smarter. To calculate the Top Members, we look at a combination of quantity and quality. Basically, the algorithm boils down to asking, "How much is this member contributing, and how valuable are her contributions?" You'll also notice that the Top Content Leaderboard takes in items across multiple features — photos, videos, blog posts, and events. Your members want to see the cool stuff now — they don't necessarily care what kind of stuff it is.

Fresh: If your Leaderboard looks the same every day, it's not going to encourage members to get involved. This was something we heard from many Network Creators who had used other Leaderboards in the past, and we wanted to make sure we built a feature that tells you what's hot right now. By default, members and content get ranked based on the last week of activity. As an NC, you can set this to a day (if your network is really active), or a month for a more long-term perspective.

Flexible: We have some ideas about how you can use Leaderboards on your Network, but we wanted to give you the freedom to use them however you want.

For example, you can customize the Leaderboards landing page (/leaderboards) to display the 5 Leaderboards that are most relevant to your Network.

Or you can hide the Leaderboards landing page altogether, and add the "Top Members" Leaderboard (/leaderboards/topmembers) as a sub-tab under your "Members" tab:



Or you can run a quick-and-dirty photo contest by loading up the Leaderboards module on the Main Page and seeing whose photo wins the day:



And naturally, you can use the Language Editor to rename just about anything you want. There are a ton of possibilities, and we're excited to hear about how you use the Leaderboards feature on your Network.

The Plan From Here

From here, we're looking to roll out more ways for your members to engage. That means releasing features including login with Facebook, Twitter, etc., as well as a Network "Like" feature. It also means continuing to improve your Leaderboards.

Here are a few next steps we have in mind for Leaderboards:

• Take your Leaderboards anywhere with RSS
• Customize your Leaderboards pages with text boxes
• Introduce the ability to drag-and-drop Leaderboards into place on your landing page
• Enrich the engagement system by rolling out a "Like" button
  

After you take your Leaderboards out for a spin, let us know if there are some improvements or new features you'd love to see added.

[Robin]

Hi Andrew,

Sorry, I just saw this. I am not sure but it took mine about a day to populate.

Robin

[MAXX]

If we want to have a week long contest, is there any way to reset the rankings to zero?

[Nick Barr]

Hey MAXX, right now there isn't a way to do that. Your Leaderboards are always rolling, so even if you start a contest on August 20 there will be items on the Leaderboard from day 1.

But by August 27, the #1 item on that list is the actual winner of the week-long contest, because your Leaderboard is looking at the last week of information (in this scenario).

Hope that makes sense. We can look into resetting rankings, let me know how that would help you run a contest more effectively.

[Botolo]

Nick can you specify the criteria for the top photos? Is this just the number of views?

[Nick Barr]

Right now it has to do with comments, and who is commenting on the photos. We have a few different formulas that weigh the comments based on freshness, variety, and the reputation of the commenter. We've looked into pageviews but so far don't consider them to be as reliable when it comes to ranking (much easier to game the system).

When we build out the Like button it will also figure into the rankings.

N

[Robin]

How soon do you think it will be before the NC's and Admins are taken out of the rankings? Thanks Nick!

[Robert]

My " Top Members " are empty ? but everything else seems to work.. this is awesome I am looking forward to doing some cools stuff with it ..

[Nick Barr]

Hey Robert, Robin (see above) is seeing something similar.

The Leaderboards might take a little time to start showing up, since we just launched them. If it's still empty after an hour or so, can you let me know and I'll check it out?

[Robert]

thank you Nick ...

[Robert]

Still now members showing up my network POZIAM

[Nick Barr]

Hey Robert,

Sorry, I don't know why this is happening. We're investigating.

-N

[Robert]

Still not loading members or events..I was curious could this be because my network is private 100% ?