Your News Feed - do you use it ? why do you like / don't like it ?

Digital Doctor

Well-known member
Xenforo's What's New and Alerts are impeccably implemented features that I find useful and effective.

I'm going to try using the "Your News Feed":

You can access your own news feed here:
http://xenforo.com/community/account/news-feed
or in >Profile >Your News Feed.

I think this feature would get much more use if it was between Watched Threads and What's New, but maybe it isn't useful enough to warrant that premium location.

Your News Feed - do you use it ? why do you like / don't like it ?

All thoughts appreciated.
 
I had to go searching for it when someone mentioned it the the other day. Could definitely be more prominent.
 
Never seen it before. Sidebar is probably a good place to show it.
Xen has lot of potential for social network.
 
I don't use it. For the rare occasion I need to find a post from somebody, I find it just as easy to go to their profile and find it.

I see it as one of those cool features, when you're looking to buy xenforo, that looks really cool but in reality isn't very useful.
 
I've never used it. Never felt the need to use it and don't foresee ever needing to use it in the future.

Do I like/dislike it? neither, I haven't really got an opinion on the feature.

However, giving it a more premium location as DD mentioned to get more use..... I don't think I'd like to see that happening though I guess with the feature in place it has the potential for add-on authors to make good use of it.
 
No i never use it. It's too hidden away. I wish it wasn't so hidden away so i could use it everyday. But i keep forgetting about it.

There needs to be a Dashboard before the forums tabs with all those hidden away tabs. With a live feed.

Xenforo needs to make this into the core or Someone needs to make an add-on. I would buy it
 
Actually, no one in my forums really use it or like it. In my opinion its a waste of space.
 
I use the news feed on xenforo.com all the time - I follow a select few members of this community and the news feed gives me a quick overview of their recent activity so I can identify any interesting threads which I may have otherwise skipped over.

I don't tend to use it much on my other sites yet - although my two largest sites are not yet migrated to XenForo, and I'll probably start using it more once they are.

I do tend to forget about it from time to time - it is kind of hidden and I do wish it was a little more prominent.

I might make a link to it in the main menu navigation on some of my forums to make it more easily found.
 
The dominant "feed" on Xenforo is of course ... Alerts (and the best part of Xenforo).
To me, Forums should be about content not individuals .... so the whole notion of following users via a feed is a bit off base.

That being said, if you want people to follow other people and you like following what a few people say ... you'll have to relocate the news-feed because people dont use it because they can't find it.

The best place would be to make a Tab called [News Feed] and put it after New Profile Posts.

upload_2015-4-7_17-21-21.webp

Another option would be to put a
upload_2015-4-7_17-23-4.webp
link beside [New Posts]
 
Rarely use it. Also I have enable it only for admins to track users activity (via add-on).

But I like your idea to add a new tab on new posts page...
 
I don't like to "follow" people, so I don't have news feed.
The whole idea of following publicly other people on a forum is sick IMHO.
Let the stars to be followed publicly on FB.
Make it hidden so the member cannot be proud, cannot be upset because of the "followers", would be fair.
"Friends" where have to agree to accept some members is badly missing from XF.
 
So it becomes less creepy when you realize following does nothing.

Not actually true that it does "nothing".

If you follow someone, their activity appears in your news feed.

The follow terminology is exactly the same as that used on Twitter and works in basically the same way.

You "follow" someone and their profile gets added to your list of people you follow, making it easy to locate their profiles in the future, and their activity also appears in your news feed - exactly like your Twitter feed.

I see the follow + news feed system as basically a form of "Twitter for XenForo".

There's nothing creepy about it - forums are not just about content, they are far more about the community, the people behind them. A forum with content and no people is just a website.

Being able to follow people allows you to segment the community into a subset of people whose opinions are important to you and who you'd like to pay extra attention to.
 
I know.
But no one uses the feed really.
So effectively it does virtually nothing.

I think that's a pretty big assumption and a false assertion. It does exactly what it was intended to to.

Yes, there is a problem that people don't really know the news feed is there or how to use it.

I'd guess that a significant percentage of the people right here on XenForo don't even understand the relationship between following users and the news feed.

Did you know that if you view your news feed without having followed anyone, it actually tells you exactly how it works?

2015-04-08_9-36-50.webp

I'd suggest that many people glance at this when they first use the site and then promptly forget about it. Once you follow someone (which in many cases people would do without recognising the relationship with the news feed), this message in the news feed disappears - thus making it even less obvious about the relationship.

I think that perhaps once you have people in your news feed, the message should be changed to something like "Follow people to show their activity in your news feed" - to remind people about how it works.

It might also be useful to include a brief description of the purpose of the following list on the "People You Follow" page, even if you already follow people - just as a reminder.
 
Top Bottom