Utilising Social Groups

Are the social groups on your vbulletin forum utilised well by yourself and your members?

On our forums we have a few groups created with a very small amount of discussion in there too. Theyre very rarely used and to be honest it has us questioning the worth of even linking to them. We could try and make them more prominent but I dont think it would be worth while. I hope someday theyre more user friendly too, at the moment its current layout and the amount of needed clicks to create a group etc are rediculous IMO.

 

I think people on my forum use them quite well, there were quite a few active groups a few weeks ago (or when I last checked). That might be a reason for somewhat less posts.

 

Maybe we should be glad they arent utilised so much

 

I tried for weeks to figure out a way to use them but could not. My personal conclusion is that they are useful for mega forums where people can discuss topics away from the main forum areas.

But I did see someone asking how to edit things so 'social groups' could be renamed to something more specific such as 'NFL Teams' (National Football League in USA).

So extending that idea further the National forum for boy/girl scouts could call the social groups 'troops' where they set up one for each troop number. Or maybe renaming them for 'Annual Scouting Events' such as a "National Troop meet at ___" where the minutes of meetings regarding the upcoming event can be recorded for the other troop leaders around the country to see, then the troop leaders could copy/paste into the troops email announcements.


For us though they have no use.

 

I've actually never seen these utilized well, myself.

 

I'll be implementing social groups when I get vB to my anime forum, I think it's a good idea for the anime fans and the small family clans we make.

 

Nobody uses social groups on my site, too inactive.

 

I remember Wayne putting together a very informative post/thread with suggestions on how to maximize the use of the social groups on vBulletin. But, I can't find it.

I've been toying around with the idea of implementing social groups on my newest site that I'm developing and wanted to see what others have done to help the social groups succeed.

I've seen these mods that I'm been thinking about using to help promote and customize the social groups....

1. New Social Groups page layout - vBulletin.org Forum
2. Latest Social Groups - Forum Home - vBulletin.org Forum
3. Social Group Statistics in Whats Going On - vBulletin.org Forum
4. Social Group Creation Announcement Threads & Private Messages - vBulletin.org Forum
5. Social Group Statistics in Categories Listing - vBulletin.org Forum
6. Social Group (Sub-)Forum List - vBulletin.org Forum

....have any of these mods proved to be helpful for anyone? :shrug:

 

I am going to use the first three or four of those. I never saw them before. As for groups. They are perfect for gaming/graphics teams which I am going to optimize!

 

We have a fair few groups on our forums, which were really busy when they first got introduced into vBulletin, but due to the lack of ntifications available people just forgot about them

 

Cel Social Groups Notifications - vBulletin.org Forum

If your using 3.8.

 

I actually thought about disabling them on this new vBulletin site I'm setting up, thanks for your post Arny, I'll check them out if we do keep them up.

 

Yeah we've got it but it doesn't do instant notifications that pop up in the notifications box that I caould see, got a version similar installed on my vb4 test forum which does and hopefully will kick them into life when we go live with vB4

 

Honestly, I don't really like the social group system... The only use I ever could see myself using it for, is pre-created groups of subjects that won't clutter the forum.

 

Celarius notification hack is not perfect, but really affects SG activity.

 

My members seem to use the social groups pretty good. Its an easy way to setup a section for contest without having to give a whole forum section to it.

I think my members have created a social group for just about every state in the nation. That makes it easy for them to find people living close by.