Mimic Facebook features, within reason?

[CreationNation]

I think now could be an interesting time for forums in specific niches. Facebook page owners are starting to get more and more frustrated with not being able to reach people who like their pages. For my specific forum (just wrapping up a conversion from VB to XF) I host forums for people, much like they could start a FB "Page".

I'm curious what other owners out there are doing to try and capture some of the functionality that FB has, and bring it into your forums?

One I would like to somehow see, is allowing people to "like" a subform/node, and get an SMS or some sort of alert to their phone much like what happens with FB, twitter, instagram, etc. That type of add-on may exist, but I am typing this topic spur of the moment while I'm thinking about it.

Does anyone else out there have functionality built in to accomplish something like this?

Essentially looking to bridge that gap between user and forum, without them needing to come to the forum. I want to persuade them, much like I am when I get notices popping up via the facebook app on my phone/computer - hard to resist.

 

[James]

One I would like to somehow see, is allowing people to "like" a subform/node, and get an SMS or some sort of alert to their phone much like what happens with FB, twitter, instagram, etc. That type of add-on may exist, but I am typing this topic spur of the moment while I'm thinking about it.

You can "watch" a forum node and receive alerts on new threads. I do this with the announcement and HYS forums.

You can then hook into the alert system with one of the few addons that send push notifications for the various mobile platforms.