Hiya,

Feedback from a number of users has indicated that they get confused by having to enter the URL to their Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn profiles. Reviewing other platforms would indicate that this is not the "norm" - eg. for Twitter, one would normally enter their @username, eg. @OhCrap for myself.

I would like to see this reworked so that the Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn (in particular) social networking components can be used universally. If I'm entering my Twitter username, it uses the Twitter API to confirm your existence, and optionally allows you to integrate with your status at the time.

Similarly, Facebook profile would use Facebook Connect, allowing users to also post their status to Facebook.

These could equally be used to optionally import your Twitter and Facebook feeds on a regular schedule.

Ok, next bits are thinking out loud:

We've had discussions before about the use of Twitter or Facebook as the login method for Active Social sites. I know Will has highlighted that this might be better in the core. The key thing though is that it needs to be enabled and presented consistently - from past experience, using DNN login, LiveID, OpenID, and Twitter is horrifically inconsistent and makes a real mess of the user table.

Hypothetically, if AS were to use Twitter oAuth and Facebook Connect, it could make itself responsible for creating the username (with collision detection logic) and password, and draw the rest from the connecting site. It'd store the relevant oAuth key and draw other relevant profile info from Twitter/Facebook. In future, users could request to 'sync' their profile with Twitter or Facebook to update it (the old Twitter login used to overwrite this every time).

This logic could apply either to a DNN core approach, or to an AS approach. I'd be concerned about the time it might take to appear in the core though, which is why I go back to the idea of AS somehow masking this - or perhaps adding its own auth providers for the purpose.

Similarly, with the prevalence of 'use Twitter' or 'use Facebook' for blog comments and so forth on the sites I visit, I can see that this is a fabulous opportunity to introduce the 'universal AS comment module' that's been mentioned before. Consistency between modules is one of the biggest 'issues' with DNN sites, and one of the huge strengths of Active Social - being able to present a consistent social interface, esp with superior commenting and anti-spam features, would make it that much more pleasant for end users.

As an example to that last one, our site has comments for blogs, videos, event calendar entries, AS journal entries, and of course group discussions and forums. Each one is a different comments implementation (to be fair, the last 2 are intended to be different). Not one has a "good" moderation system that could be reliably used such as Akismet - the best implementation is a pure review and approve system (which is fine, but some automation would be nice).

Long post, but I guess the overall point is to try to further hook AS (and DNN) into the existing social networking sphere, particularly on the concept of allowing cross-pollination ... for example, being able to update LinkedIn and Facebook from Twitter, and being able to follow people in different ways based on preference; some people like Facebook, some like LinkedIn, some Twitter, and some the website. If I ever get an app happening for our AS implementation, that might be another way - but doesn't rule out any of the others.

I'll shut up now :-)


Matt

One other possibility - if the Twitter update will be too long, truncate and add a link to the full post, ala Facebook, Tumblr, etc?

Did you submit it in Gemini yet... :)

I'm new to AS (still haven't purchased).. but very interesting comments/suggestions.