Ning Engagement System & Leaderboards

[Nick Barr]

One of the coolest things about the new Like Buttons is that they enrich and improve the Ning Engagement System, which is what powers Network Leaderboards. 

As a refresher, Leaderboards are designed to answer the question, What (and Who) is hot right now? Leaderboards aren't quite the same thing as a points/ranking system (which is a separate, cool idea) because Leaderboards are more worried about "What have you done for me lately" than "What's your all-time reputation/contribution."

You can control how to define "lately" — by counting activity back to the past day, week, or month. 

Here are the actions that increase the content engagement score (from most valuable to least valuable):

• A Comment
• A Like (Facebook or Network)
• Any kind of Share

At its core, that's it — other factors come into play, such as a member's behavior. For example, if the member has already commented on several other posts, or commented on the same post several times, his/her comments will not be as valuable that day. Factors like these ensure that the Engagement System reflects what's actually interesting to the greatest number of members.

One other change we made recently was to make sure that content can show up in Leaderboards, even if it hasn't gotten any comments or likes yet. This means that small networks with less activity won't have empty Leaderboards.

We'll continue to tweak and improve the Ning Engagement System over time — one of the things we're interested in today is how much more Likes should weigh vs. Comments. We made a decision based on how we see Likes and Comments used on other sites (like Facebook and Youtube), but as we collect more data on the Ning Platform we can hone this to better reflect how you and your members use the feature.

[Jordon McGee (Jords)]

That is a very good point!

[Nick Barr]

Currently we don't count views in the Engagement System. We're kind of on the fence about them in general. The trend is moving away from looking at hits/views (I read a kind of interesting article about this that I'll try to dig up) and more toward meaningful engagement, like a reaction (comment/like/share/vote up, etc). 

 

Also, views are potentially easier to game, especially if you count signed out views.

 

All that said we know they're important to many folks, so they're on our radar.

[Speed Racer]

Also, views are potentially easier to game, especially if you count signed out views.

 I think you need to consider that a LOT of networks do not have the requirement to be a member to view the site, so, in my opinion, views are no less important than these leaderboards for registered members. Alot of sites have members who are popular blog writers, and the number of views, be it by signed in members or non-member or signed out viewers, is important for them to see (without having to add some third party counter EVERY TIME they post!). Every writer in the world likes to know people are reading what they write!

 Why is it we have view counters on videos and pictures, but many people are BEGGING for the same on blogs, and we don't get them? Seems to me (and I could be wrong, no doubt about that) that for Ning to add the same view counter to blogs as on pics and vids would be as simple as a blog poster adding a third party hit counter code to the post? To me, a third party hit counter looks terrible, especially when there are ones built into the pics and vids pages....JMHO

[Brad Flora]

I +1 the idea of a hit counter for blog posts, and really for every any page, thread, etc. From a content managers standpoint, right now, I only see this as a good feature.

[Neil Norton]

It would be great if in addition to "top content" using the ning algorithm you had an option to use "most viewed" as another way to post your content.  My members are not big commentators or sharers but they like to view our content so I find "top content" to be misleading to which content is most popular.  

[Susan Daniels]

Thank you for a nice engagement system. The members on my newest network REALLY like the Top 10 feature.

Warmly,

Susan

[Writer Chick {Diane}]

If you base it more on "likes" than comments, then my leaderboard will be inaccurate.  For some reason, the "like" features aren't a big hit on my network.  Probably because they're so limited.  The photos/videos/blogs aren't hot spots on my site. We need "like" on profile pages and the discussions INSIDE of groups!  (as well as groups themselves.)

[Jordon McGee (Jords)]

Yeah me need the "like" feature on pretty much every feature for the most part.

[Nick Barr]

Diane, Comments are worth more than Likes. Let me know what in my post made you think otherwise, and I'll edit it for clarity.

[Chris Richards]

Comments have to be worth more.. posting a comment is more engaging than clicking a button to like.. we want our members to be as engaged as possible and although the Like gets them engaged on a low level, what we really want is the comments.. let's reward them for taking the time to actually comment.

[Jordon McGee (Jords)]

Totally Agree! If I "LIKE" content that means it caught my eye, but if I "COMMENT" on content it means I'm actually interested in it and am engaging the content along with it's associated users.

[Nick Barr]

Chris, Comments are worth more than Likes. Let me know what in my post made you think otherwise, and I'll edit it for clarity.