YC's Private Live Feed (Please Read Description before voting)

So I've been getting mixed thoughts in the shoutbox about YC utilizing a private feed to track your "connection's" thread posts and uploads. Let me explain a little more what I was thinking. Some ways the feed would work:

1. User A is friends with user B. If user B reviews user C and user D's compositions, user A will see this activity, and can review the work directly from the feed, rather than looking through the forum.
   
2. User A is friends with user B. If user Z "likes" user B's composition, user A will see this, and have the opportunity to comment directly on the piece in the feed. The comments will be tied to the forum.
   
3. User A is friends with user B and C. If B and C post threads in the forum, user A will see this activity in his feed. He will also see the comments associated with the thread. User A can directly comment on the forum post in the feed. All comments here will be controlled by the forum.
   
4. User A is friends with user B. If user A reviews or "likes" user Z's work, user B will see this in his feed. Thus, user B has an opportunity to directly review user Z's work in his feed.
   
5. User A "recommends" user Z's piece to user B. User B can then directly see all reviews on user Z's piece through the feed. User B can either "like" the piece, or review user Z's piece through the feed. If user B is friends with user D,C and E, those users plus user A will see that user B reviewed user Z's piece.
   

How would you guys feel about implementing a system like this? It shouldn't be hard to add, now that we have the infrastructure in place. Let me know your thoughts!

I'm not sure about this, if your intent is to create more of a social community. This seems to encourage more closed communication among "friends" kind of like forming cliques rather than more open interaction with the community as a whole. What if you have no friends or are just starting out as a new member? You're much less likely to get attention to your music. Just my 2 cents.

Keep in mind we have other ways of visibility, such as the search engine, directory, and forum posts. A network in general is a very complicated system. As more relationships are built, visibility will be increased exponentially, apart from our usual methods of finding music.

Example: User A is friends with user B. User B is friends with User C,D,E. User A will see C,D and E's interactions with B. But user's C, D and E may interact with F, G and H. If F, G and H interact with C, D and E, user B will see this, and user B can act on this. If user B acts on this, user A will then recognize user F, G and H.

This system I believe will increase visibility and awareness by a tremendous amount.

Wow, that's a lot of letters. Can't you think of a simpler way of showing these relations and activities? :sweat:

Anyways, if we can do a private feed, we can do a public feed. It's good for the browsing experience. I introduced this to you through my sketches. We don't want to MANDATE friending people just to see their activity in the feed, it'd be better to think of friending as the connection you make with people that you would rather see before everybody else on the site - an applied filter that can be turned on and of at the click of a mouse (... or trackpad). This makes it easy for you to keep track of composers with like interests or styles, or just generally people that interest you - rather than going back to their music page or forum thread once a day and checking it yourself - just have everything you want fed to you on one page. Or... not even used at all if the person doesn't want to. They can just use the public feed at all times and see who is commenting what when.

I like the idea of a feed. If the feed is public, I think filters will be very important because the feed would get flooded with everyone's information. It's fun seeing what other members are up to though.

-John

It's a good idea but it's not needed imo.

I wouldn't comment on something just because a friend did and I wouldn't really be interested if someone else commented/favourited their work.

I think the "view new content" feature is perfect and enough.

Perhaps this could be an updated version of it. You could apply an "uploads only" filter or "new topics only" filter, or various others. How would you feel about that?

I reckon an opt in system would be better than a FB style feed if this idea has to go forward.

For example - I go to James H's profile, I click beneath the find posts/ find thread options "Watch Posts" and I get a notification when he posts. I click "Watch Music", I get one he posts a piece. IF James H though does not like me for some reason, he can "Block User" from receive said notifications (and in this case the user doesn't see the options to click "Watch Posts" or "Watch Music"). If James H hates everyone he can opt out of the watch system and not have anyone watch him.

I like that. Could have "Watch Posts/New Threads/Music/Reviews" instead of "Friending". I never liked the idea of a "friends" system, but we should have some way to control private feeds. The "watch" idea would be a nice replacement.

Well wouldn't that be almost exactly the same thing as the dashboard of the old site? :blink:

No, it's like the Feed page I proposed in the other thread as far as I can tell. The dashboard as it is now is stupid and I think choppy knows that.

I think the feed idea would be useful enough, although an option should be present as to what we want shown. For example, I wouldn't want to get updates on my friend's comments and posts, but uploads and comments on my own uploads would definitely have their place.

I don't think number two is necessary - if someone comments on my friend's piece, I don't need to see that. If I get notified when he posts the actual piece, that would be helpful.