What I would like to see on Ning

I have been using Ning for the past few weeks or so. The only tool that I use is this one, the forums. I have been playing with the Chatterwall on my page and on others. I am not sure of the friend request. There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of benefit to it. The search function makes no sense. I searched for "Christopher Potter" and it said I wasn't a member. I searched for "mrpotter" and I miraculously appeared as a member. Why not be able to search for either one? I may be going crazy, but I thought I was able to edit my page here. I want to rearrange some pieces on my page and delete others and I can't seem to find the option to do it. It isn't logically obvious to me. I thought we could do that last week, I may be wrong on that. I am a member of a few different SN on Ning. Why do I have to keep entering a biography, etc.? It has been said before, but I'll throw it on here. Feedreaders do not differentiate between a new discussion and a new comment.

Now, why am I still here and asking you to be my amigo? Because I think there is a ton of potential here. The forum alone has provided me the opportunity to discuss with topics with teachers from around the globe. Where else can I find something like that? Some things I'd like to see: A tagging system that shows me when a new topic/tag that I am interested in. A "watch" system that shows me when a friend or someone I enjoy reading has posted a new discussion or a new comment. This would make the friend function a little more useful. Drag and drop on the different sections of the my page section would be great too. Basically I'd like a combination of Newsvine.com and Netvibes.com

Please add any ideas you have below and maybe it will give the powers that be some ideas.

Tags: classroom2.0, ning, technology

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Permalink Reply by Dana Huff on April 24, 2007 at 3:48pm

I'd like to be notified when someone posts a follow-up to a discussion I am participating in. I find it tedious to check each one. Or am I missing something?

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Permalink Reply by SusanTsairi on April 28, 2007 at 1:55pm

Hi Dana, at the bottom of each discussion is a link for an RSS feed, which allows you to subscribe to the discussion.

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Permalink Reply by Christopher Potter on April 28, 2007 at 4:00pm

I took the forum RSS feed off of my feedreader, because there was no rhyme or reason to what it was displaying. It just spit out all the feeds in no particular order.

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Permalink Reply by Dana Huff on April 29, 2007 at 10:36am

Thanks, Christopher, that's what I was going to say. I can't think of a single other social network that doesn't e-mail you when someone responds to your post or adds a comment to your page.

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Permalink Reply by Gina Bianchini on April 30, 2007 at 4:39pm

And we'll be doing better email notifications, including this, in June. Yes, June will be a big month. Thanks!!!

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Permalink Reply by Durff on April 28, 2007 at 3:50pm

RSS will show you new content in your aggregator.

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Permalink Reply by Nancy Cavillones on April 29, 2007 at 9:19am

When I receive a friend request, the first thing I like to do is check out that person's profile before I accept the request. When you click on the person's thumbnail, though, from the "Friend Request" thingy at the top of the screen, it takes you to that person's friends. Quite frankly, I don't care what other friends that person has! LOL. I want to click on the thumbnail and have it go to that person's profile, instead of having to do a member search. Sometimes, when I do a member search, I can't even find that person. Today, I got a friend request--I searched for both the user name and the name in parentheses. Nothing. I searched for his profile in his friends' friend list. Nothing. I ended up declining his request because I couldn't find him by clicking on the thumbnail that comes up in the "Friend Request" section.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin H. on April 29, 2007 at 9:24am

Great points, Nancy, and this is just what I was going to write.
I want to be able to click on a "possible friend" icon and lead me to their homepage so I can determine the viability of the connection, and not their network of contacts.
And I also agree that the search engine for people is completely useless.
Kevin

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Permalink Reply by Gina Bianchini on April 30, 2007 at 4:50pm

Hey Kevin!

So, you can access a prospective friend "homepage" in the network from which they invited you directly from the friend request invitation.

There's not an universal personal page for all of Ning. If they aren't on the network(s) you already use, then that possible friend icon and "panel" uptop on the page is the Ningwide-view into that person. You can accept or decline that request from there. We'll be upgrading this "interface" over the summer.

The search engine can and is being dramatically upgraded shortly :-)

Thanks for the great feedback!