Show who invited a member in their profile

[Marc]

I am using Ning to run the online component of a private business networking group, and I have a feature request.

To ensure a high quality of discussion in our group I have added a custom profile question "Name of member that invited you". The reasons I want this to appear are:

1. Members are more likely to behave when their behaviour will not only reflect upon themselves, but also upon the member that invited them (ie. by people clicking on the name of a trouble maker to see "which idiot invited this person?").
2. It will make members think carefully about who they invite... so they don't end up being the idiot that invited that person!! We are after quality rather than quantity.
3. Finally, the inviting member, knowing their name appears on the profile of that member that is not following the rules, may take it upon themselves to set member straight before an administrator is required to step in. In other words, everyone could become a sort of unofficial moderator for the members they invite, taking pressure of NC's to always play policeman.

Given there is an invite system in place, I am guessing that it wouldn't be too hard for the Ning database to record the name of the member that invited each new member, and show that in the new member's profile. So if John invites Mary, Mary's profile would include the line "invited by John".

Does anyone else think this idea has merit?

Also, while I am here, it would be nice if there was a leader board for successful invitations.

[TAW]

Yes!!! Great idea, especially for my use, soon I am going to have a membership drive contest. Who ever invites the most members get "widget prize". I was wondering how I was going to track the invites and who came in because of who. Right now it would have to be a manually submitted registry from each member, who they invited, etc. But if we had this feature, it would make it really easy to determine who invited the most members and who gets the grand prize.

Excellent idea. though my reasons are different than yours Marc, I love the idea.

John

[Janettee McCrary]

Yes, I agree that it should be visible, at least to admin.

I also agree that there should be a invitations leaderboard, like a "Top Referrer" section or something.

[Terry Boydell]

You can do this by creating a question during the sign up process. Who ere you invited by? Make it compulsary to answer. You can choose whether it's private or not. Either way admins an see it on their profile

[Marc]

Hi Terry,

Thanks for the suggestion. If you have a look at my original post you'll see that is what I am already doing. I just figured that if the information is stored in the database and is easily accessible, and it only involves a small amount of programming to retrieve that information have it automatically appear (with the NC having the option to display or hide it, of course), then I'd rather save my members a minute or two by not having to ask that question.

And as I said, I'd also like to take it further and see it used in a leaderboard, given I am guessing that most NC's that are trying to grow their networks would value successful invitations as much as, if not significantly more than, posting a new photo, for example. This would be much easier to do if it was automatic, as building a leaderboard based on a response to a custom profile question seems more difficult to me.

[Janettee McCrary]

Agreed. One of the issues I've found with making it a required question is that when I ask "How did you find out about us? If you were referred, please give their name so they get credit for the referral." People will say "Facebook" (rather than what PAGE on Facebook, or was it on a friends wall, and if so, which friend?) or "Referral" or "A friend". I haven't been able to get very many people to actually say a NAME... Just the ones that I personally invited LOL. That's helpful.

And yes, I agree that it would be a great addition to have it as some sort of leaderboard, so we could have "Referral Contests".

[Chris Rebibes Delacruz]

Other forum sites have a "Top Referrer" leaderboard.  To me, that would mean that there are scripts that have already been created.  They just need to be modified and made available.  If other forums like SMF have it, why not Ning, right?

[Edward]

I would like this feature too. This information is already stored in the membership data - does anyone know how to display it on member profiles?