Merge BuddyPress Followers into BuddyPress Core

[johnjamesjacoby]

​https://github.com/r-a-y/buddypress-followers

The Friends vs. Followers paradigm is ubiquitous enough on the web and within social networks, that I think there is value in bringing this plugin into BuddyPress core.

In some ways, the traditional "Friendship" relationship model is overly simple. In other ways, it's so completely clear that it's comforting to know what it does and how it works.

The problem with Friends as it works today is the back-and-forth acknowledgement and acceptance of the relationship. Followers removes that complexity, and acts more or less as a funnel for isolating the global activity stream down to the individuals someone cares most about.

[johnjamesjacoby]

See also: #1427

[Bowromir]

I think this would make a very welcome addition and would love to see it in core. Reasoning:

• Both the "Follow" & "Friendship" connection type has been widely adopted by all major social networks and giving a site owner a built-in option to choose the ideal connection for his/her members is a good thing. In fact I've seen a gradual shift in my client projects towards preferring "Following" over Friendships. Additionally with sites like Facebook having both, this is also becoming a more common model.

• I love his Ray has extended the functionality by also allowing someone to Follow a site in Multisite, a powerful and extremely useful feature for many communities.

In summary: +1 :D

[espellcaste]

For clarification @johnjamesjacoby, is the idea to deprecate the Friends component for the Followers or to keep both in BuddyPress?

[johnjamesjacoby]

Replying to espellcaste:

For clarification @johnjamesjacoby, is the idea to deprecate the Friends component for the Followers or to keep both in BuddyPress?

Keep them both readily available, not deprecating Friends.

A person may have friends who they wish to unfollow, and there may be complete strangers worth following.

The act of "following" someone is likely to integrate into:

• The Activity stream, as a means for creating a curated feed of people who you wish to follow across a network.
• The Friends component, automatically following people who become a person's friend
• The Settings component, with appropriate toggles for even allowing someone to follow them (maybe they don't want to be followed?)
• The Groups component, in that I want to follow all activity of specific groups
• The Emails API, where HTML emails can be crafted for communicating who's newly following whom
• The Notifications component, for one-way alerts to members that they have new followers

[imath]

We should create a BuddyPress Add-on about it. I already suggested it to @r-a-y while working on making it ready with 12.0.0.

[shawfactor]

@imath surely enhancing the current friends component to accommodate different types of user to user relationships is a FAR better approach on multiple levels?

[imath]

I recently understood the scope of @r-a-y’s great plugin was larger than adding the possibility to follow members. This is an important point we need to consider before including it as is into the BP Add-ons collection.

[imath]

No news from @r-a-y Let's bring it back when he'll reply.

[espellcaste]

@imath no news since then?

[imath]

I confirm @espellcaste no news 😔

[espellcaste]

@r-a-y Pinging you again! =D

[emaralive]

@espellcaste

See the following:

​Would like to take over this plugin, or help. Additionally see, ​Critical Error While Activating BuddyPress Follow

[espellcaste]

As per our last conversation about this, we will wait as long as we can from @r-a-y's feedback before forking it. But it is clear the plugin needs some luv.