Make Grapevines more Twitter-like

Thinking about the new Group Grapevines, it occurred to me that it would be great if all Grapevines were much more Twitter-like. What I mean is that you could see all messages from all your

friends, not just the ones they send directly to you.

You could call it ”Flutter”! Like a butterfly’s wings. Get it? And messages

could be called “flaps”…. Or just leave it the Grapevine. Anyway…

One thing this would do is make the individual Grapevine more similar

to the group Grapevines. And I think it would be really cool if your personal Grapevine (or Flutter) widget would follow you around the site in the right-hand sidebar like the group Grapevine widget.

The two could even be merged in some way, so that you could select to see your personal grapevine, or the grapevine for a specific group you’re a member of, or all grapevines together in one big “flutterific” stream.

A major benefit of this “twitterfication” is that, if you come across some really cool content on the site, your grapevine widget will be right there handy, so that you can shoot of a quick message to all your friends and/or all your fellow group members to attract their attention to it.

With something like this, we really wouldn’t even need seeds anymore to figure out what’s hot. Just look at what’s getting “fluttered” a lot. And that’s something that could be fairly easily automated, too.

Hmm… and while we’re stealing ideas, how about adding mood icons to grapevine messages, like they have over at Get Satisfaction (and elsewhere)? Might add some valuable information to the “hotness” algorithm… Oh wait, seems like we’ve had a conversation like this before…. ;)

Anyway, cool, eh?

~G

Re: Make Grapevines more Twitter-like

Oh, I get you! It’s a little like the ‘Activity’ under ‘Friends’ in your sidebar, but as a widget instead, yes? Except that you’d have the benefit of being able to enter text there as well… Neat. I like. And the flutter idea is fabulous! Like a butterfly or a heart. Very cool.

:muses:

Re: Make Grapevines more Twitter-like

Yeah, kinda sorta like that, in the sense that it would be stuff by all your friends.

I’d see having something like a “Tweet this” button along side (or in place of) the heart button, which would make a link to the content and let you enter a brief comment to share the link with your friends and/or broader network of co-members in groups.

The widget in the right-hand sidebar would then (also) be used to enter in free text without a link, like normal grapevine texts, which would appear in the same feed as the “tweet this” texts. Like Twitter….

You could also let people select whether their “Gaia tweets” (or “flutters” or “flaps” or whatever they end up being called) are public or private (viewable only by people in their “network” to varying levels – co-members of groups, friends of friends, etc.), and if they choose public, the tweets could also be shown on the Gaia home page or other “what’s hot” pages to help people see what’s going on in and around Gaia. Kinda like the answers to questions you already post, but better in a lot of ways.

Anyway, yeah, sounds pretty cool to me, too!

~G