The CUNY Academic Commons project is producing some very interesting plug-ins — especially interesting for professional networks. I posed a questions around one of their recent plug-ins, and I repeat it here: In a professional network do you want to ‘friend’ people or ‘follow’ them. Friend behavior requires agreement from both parties — you request to be my friend, and I acknowledge that you are indeed a friend. Follow behavior is one-way — I decide you are interesting and I want to follow your community activity. In the follow behavior a they might elect to also follow the other person, but that is optional.
Basically it is FaceBook vs Twitter/Yammer styles. In my mind a professional network — i.e. other program developers at my university — are already vetted and on some level peers. Even if the group is everyone employed at my company, the fact that they work at the same company as I do should entitle them to monitor activities I decide to share. So I favor the follow approach. It seems more natural to me in a professional setting. What do you think?
Teleogistic / New BuddyPress plugin: Invite Anyone
second, each person has to become friends with the group admin; third, each person has to request membership or wait to be invited (in the case of private groups). I just released a plugin called Invite Anyone that cuts out the second step: with the plugin activated, group admins can invite anyone from the installation, not just friends.
ADD YOUR COMMENT
Comments are moderated.
Randall Rode's online home for thoughts, notes, and experiments with a wide range of technology topics. Visit the about page for info on my recent projects and professional background. I welcome your comments!
New articles are normally posted on Mondays and Wednesdays. Subscribe to the RSS feed or the email update to keep current on the latest posts.
Past listings from 2004 to the present
Need a home (or better home) for your website? I highly recommend HostRocket -- they are the best!
