More Latest Activity Feed Improvements: What's New with "Top News"

[Alex]

If you follow along with the announcements here on the Creators Network, you'll know that we've been making gradual improvements to the Activity Feed since we revamped it last summer. Most recently, we added Sharing and Liking capabilities directly in the feed, and we added Top News, a secondary feed that can include new content types like Facebook and Twitter posts.

We have some more improvements to the Activity Feed for you today, as well as some insight into additional items we may add to the Activity Feed in the future.

First, we've moved the Top News beta to the Ning Labs section. This is still a beta release, so you'll need to turn it on if you want to try it out. You can turn it on or off directly from the Ning Labs section. As always, if you're uncomfortable with a beta release, you may want to wait. But, if you're ready to try something new, go turn it on. (These updates we're writing about are now live.)

Second, during the initial beta we saw that some Network Creators had trouble setting up their Facebook and Twitter feeds using the Social Feeds feature. So, we added automatic validation of the feeds. If you try to insert a Facebook or Twitter feed that doesn't exist, this feature will be smart and indicate that the feed isn't valid. One important detail around feeds is that they will need to be fully public to be usable in Top News.

Next, we have hover cards. Now, when you mouse over an item from Facebook or Twitter, you will see information about the account that posted the content. This may include information such as who has liked it. It's a mini preview of some of the details. You may have seen something similar on other sites. Very convenient. 

Those are the main things we've added to the Activity Feed for this round of improvements, but we will definitely be adding more. To that end, we'd like to know which of these possible future improvements would be ones you'd like to see:

• Real-time indication of new Activity Feed items added that would prompt viewers to click to refresh the feed.
• Ability to enter Twitter search terms or hashtags, which will pull in relevant tweets and display them in the Activity Feed.
• Visual design improvements to be more consistent across all of the different content types.
• More social feeds like YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest, etc., as well as specified RSS feeds.
• Ability to add additional Twitter accounts.
• Ability to pull in a thumbnail as a preview of the underlying content that appears on Twitter or Facebook.

We are spit-balling ideas like this, so feel free to let us know which of those sound most attractive to you. They won't all happen, but some of them probably will. As always, we want your input before making our final decisions.

[Ted @ CareGiving Live!]

If actual REAL-TIME, automatic refresh of new content can't be done, then Yes, I would love to see a PROMPT indicator.

and yes to Twitter "Pull-In" also.

Thanks!

[Eric Suesz]

Stay tuned, Ted. We may have some updates for you next week. 

[Hugh]

I'd like to see the ability to filter which tweets appear in the activity feed. Some of my tweets, generated through Twitterfeed, report (and therefore repeat) what's already generated in the activity feed directly from on site activity. I can mark those, but I'd need the Ning Sociak Activity fetaure to allow me to filter those out.

Also, all my tweets appear in the Top News feed when turned on. That can't make sense. I'd like to be able to choose to delink the social activity and top news features.

[ibrahim]

how soon do you think all this will be available i think they are great for  interation between the member, by the way will members be able to share stuff from their facebook to people ning platform you know like the creators are able to post our products on twitter and facebook?

[EAM]

Thanks guys! I think the two of those which would be most useful are the additional twitter accounts for network owners and the hashtag hack...both sound like great tools to improve back and forth.

[EAM]

Also Pinterest seems to have a big copyright fight coming up. They way they do things now exposes their users...so until that's hashed out I would prefer not to have the option... or allow me to NOT integrate.

[JF]

The most important that I feel Ning can do to improve the Activity Feed, is implement a "friends only" view or feed.  This is such a crucial factor and a huge detriment to the network now!!  Any update on this idea?

[CocteauBoy]

Thanks for bringing this up! Though it may already be in effect, because I know that Private Group posts show up in the feed, and on a person's profile, IF you are a part of that Group, but not when you are not a part of that Group. So maybe this is already in effect, in general?

[Leo!]

I like it. But i think posts posted in Top news should stay there only and not go to the newsfeed. And posts posted in the newsfeed if by a featured member or admin, should go to top news. Just saying :)

[soaringeagle]

disagree 100% since  hardly anyone looks at top news the posts by the featured members would be missed more often then not if they arent in the activity feed

[Alexander Molina]

I think it would be a good idea if the comments in the source of Latest Activity could see by default like this.

And the networks owners  could choose between this form or display the comments like it is now.

The purpose is to invite members to interact more.