Tell us who referred member

[Travis]

To cut down on the amount of spam/porn accounts, I've set our network to moderated membership. A couple of times a day I go through the backlog and approve/decline members.

Something that would be an immense help when going through this process is to know whether someone invited the person to the network and, if so, who. Especially when dealing with cases where the person filled out so little information that its hard to tell if the account is legit or not, knowing whether or not someone invited them would go a long way to determining if the account should come down on the side of approval or decline.

Since this information is available in the invited membership list, anyway, it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to add to the approve/decline screen as well? (I say, hopefully.)

[Kyle]

I actually have a private profile question which requests this information ("Invited by:"). It's not required, but it can sometimes be the difference in telling me whether or not a member is valid. I can also track who has invited the most people. :)

[Travis]

But since the system already knows this-- and multiple people can often invite the same person-- wouldn't it be nice if the system would just tell you the info?

I mean, there's a lot of things I'd love to see done with this info-- I'd love to be able to see how many people each of my members have invited, what percentage have joined, etc., so I can figure out the relative "value" and what the most effective sources of new members are. But just being able to start moving this information off the one tab that contains it now and onto the approval screen would be one small step that would have a huge impact on my day to day usage...

[Kyle]

While we're on the subject of the invited tab, I'd lover to be able to search the invited list and export it to a csv file (similar to the members tab).

[Jen]

Very nice idea.
:-)

[Evan]

Hey Travis!

This is a great request. I'm going to tag this and see if we can do something about it.

/Evan
Ning Product Manager

[Ken]

I think Travis's suggestion, coupled with a points/rewards system, is a must have requirement.

[Garfield Creator]

Extending this idea to virtual gifts ( if we consider referrals to be of any value at all) awarding credits would be a nice way to reward and acknowledge the members who help grow membership. It certainly helps to provide a bigger base for possible virtual gift purchases. :-)

[Travis]

Well, instead of gifts, what if this was tied into the points system we were discussing in another thread? Personally, on my networks, inviting someone else who joined would be one of the most "valuable" point generators. Taking this another step further, it would be awesome if you could gain points by the actions of OTHER people as well-- i.e., if you invite someone who joins, who in turn invites five people who also join, you get full credit for one and partial for the other 5. Same with, for instance, posting a blog or forum post-- you get X number of points for your post, but then another Y number of points each time someone else replies to it.

You would then be free to award virtual gifts to anyone you like based upon the number of points earned...

[Garfield Creator]

I get you. Grandchildren points. An almost descendants type royalty. I wonder about this and how effective it would be. This definitely seems to going into online forum features like territory. I am right there with you though on points I just used the word credits instead of them.

Ning does automatically seem to be tracking some of this activity stuff though.

[MelissaNJ]

It tracks an overall number which is only useful for people who are debating whether or not to join. There should be a point system like most run of the mill forums have. You earn points for posts, invites, and log ins. I would take it a step further and include uploads as well. Next to every members name there should also be a level system, which all forums use as well, showing who is a "noob" and who is a long time contributor. Most members value these stats and work hard to improve them so that they can be recognized as someone of importance. Without this system, ning fails miserably. I can only hope that this is currently in the works.

[Janettee McCrary]

I too would love to see all of these requests come to pass:)

[Garfield Creator]

It's been a while since I have looked at this and looking at what you've written I can see that the invite game while not native to Ning accomplishes some of this.

It can be tailored to generate unique invite IDs for all your members that they can then be used by them to invite people and the invite IDs can be kept secret within the site.

If you ever have a problem with a member you can trace it back to the person who invited them. This can be done now. There may be a few things to figure out here and there but I can see this taking care of the aspect keeping track of members and invites. Also because it is spreadsheet based statistics can be run off of it. This might be an interim solution until Ning implements this native to Ning.