your social network and dating script provider

When the list of scripts above ready for intergration?

They are ready already, they are just not packed in a downloadable form (suitable for the package manager). So if you want us to install it for you, this can be done right away.
We will pack and offer them for download after we release patch 1.09 which should be by the end of next week.

excellent news - re forum bridges finished.

It's also good to hear about the potential to get custom work done regarding integration of skype.  I see you mention Open AIM (which is new to me), but is yahoo messenger possible, Dan?

I'll need to give more thought to the possibility of messenger/skype integration - given that such communication possibilities may mean my free users never feeling any great need to sign-up.

Yes, yahoo is also possible and one way you could use such features is to restrict them to paid members only.

But any websites where I see the yahoo messenger icon beside users' names/handles, it is either grey or yellow (the person is offline or online in messenger).  And if you click on it, or hover over it, you can identify their yahoo messenger handle.    

I am not sure that you could hide this from a freebie on one's site.  Wouldn't they be able to see this?

Hehe, we're better than this
You can make it so profile categories are visible only to certain membership levels. So if you create a "Contact" category containing the "Yahoo ID" profile field but make this category visible only to paid memberships then only paid members will see it (and its fields) when looking at someone's profile.
Anyone will be able to enter their contact details (in your case the yahoo id) but just the paid members will be able to see someone else's contact details.
Check out the Profile Categories menu in your admin panel (and edit a category to get to the access part).

I like your style!!  

I hadn't considered that the various profile categories could be accessible only by certain specified membership levels.  This is an area that I have yet to try out.  

Yeee-haaa.  And of course in allowing such a communication device as yahoo messenger or skype, it means there will be less stress placed on any instant messenger device that we have on our site.  Folks will instead tend to use something they are already familiar with e.g. yahoo messenger.  

On my real estate website, the ability to use skype and messenger is gonna be so useful.

Dan, I've been giving this a lot of thought....and chatted on it at length with Maverick today.

With this addon, covering say skype, yahoo messenger and msn messenger, I think you could put the etano IM development on the backburner.  Your idea (i.e. this addon) is much better.

It kills lots of birds with one stone i.e.

1 - it means there is now no longer any great need/pressure for a separate of etano instant messenger to be developed;

2 - with a third party messenger, there will be no hogging of our bandwidth

3 - our users will feel at home, using their old favourite messengers.....they will feel at ease.

4 - they will have loads of existing contacts on their messenger and skype contact lists.....thus imagine the infinite viral marketing/promotion possibilities!  They will tell their friends on their lists, of our respective sites.

In my opinion, the mod should have all three options for members that they can include, MSN, Yahoo, and Skype.  That will, I imagine, cover over 95% of people's needs.

I've pondered and researched this a fair bit recently and just had rather lengthy discussion with Strawberries on the subject which further enlightened us both on the potential advantages and possibilities this could have.

If possible, ideally have it so members have the option of making it private or public, meaning if they chose private, only those that have been added to their "Friends List" would be able to instant message them. If they chose Public then it would be made available to all those that are premium members. Non-members and free members wouldn't have access to or see your messenger icon on the site (of course this would depend on what accesses levels you allow in the admin).

Not suggesting this is a total replacement for everyone in lue of having a built-in IM solution, but in the mean time it would certainly give most of us a instant messaging solution and give Dan some breathing room to work on an IM solution further down the road.

There are some features a built in IM can offer which this solution cannot:
1. you can use the defined banned words in their conversations.
2. their privacy is still protected.
3. while chatting, they would appear as online thus making your site appear more active.
4. by using the site's IM they will have to stay on your site thus having to renew their membership.
5. being integrated into the site they could use the block member/spammer buttons of the site.
6. as admin you can have access to chat logs and stats to identify the pros and cons of the IM, usage statistics, etc.
7. the IM (as we envision it) would be much more than simple user to user instant messages. As admin you will be able to send instant alerts to all online site members and a few other tricks I don't feel like disclosing yet.

By using the external messenger they could pay for a month while they gather some contacts then be offline and switch to free membership for 2-3 months.

The problem with Maverick's access sharing to this field proposal is that this would turn the caching of profile data from category level to field level. So if you have 30 profile fields (hair, age, location, eye color, weight, etc) this means 30 cache files for each user, for each skin. Doing about 30 disk reads for a single profile would make the caching system inefficient.
Having a whole profile category in cache instead of individual fields requires only 3-6 disk reads (fields are grouped into categories).

Let's assume that we will allow member to share profile categories with friends (which could be a good idea).
I see one problem with this and Maverick's proposal: if someone shares some category with friends and has both paid and free friends then this would make the category appear to paid but not to free which would lead to confusion. Yes, we can make it display a "upgrade now to see this info" note but still, a share with friends for me means a share with ALL friends and would look like the site is trying to manipulate me in a too invasive way.

The IM might have a hosted version (with the server hosted by us) to not hog your bandwidth but this is something we will have to decide after the IM is ready to calculate the bandwidth needed and correct pricing.

I am not militating for any solution in particular (though it might seem so ), I'm just bouncing ideas with you. Since you see the bright side of the skype/yahoo solution, I must show you the bright side of the IM solution.

Last edited by datemill on 2008-02-09 07:28 GMT

Actually I wasn't really thinking of this solution as being in lieu of a built-in IM, but rather as an additional option. Both solutions do have their potential pros and cons. The caching mechanism is one aspect that I hadn't considered, but I'm also not 100% sure how it works anyway, but I do see what you mean.

By using the external messenger they could pay for a month while they gather some contacts then be offline and switch to free membership for 2-3 months.

It's great to bounce ideas around.  And good to sometimes play devil's advocate.

Dan, you've touched upon a couple of issues that have also been of some concern to me....namely, I don't want to allow freeloaders to have an easy time picking up users' contact details;  and I don't want my users' being harassed via their messengers.

OK, let me try and answer some of my/our fears.  Yes, if we offered monthly membership, then there would be a potential issue, re freeloaders only paying for a single month, and collecting all the contact details of those they like.  On my own site, the prices will be minimal - and will be for an entire year (e.g. 50 or 60 dollars per annum).  Also, if we have active sites, there will always be new members signing up each day/week.  Freeloaders are not gonna find it easy to screw us.

Regarding harassment/security for our users'.  I have thought about this a bit.  At the end of the day, our users' can block any harassment via their messengers (i.e. block the harasser).  And they are as likely to be harassed in etano's own IM device, as they are via yahoo messenger or msn.  

To sum it up, security, privacy and freeloaders are my main concerns regarding this addon.  But after some thought, i think all the issues are dealable with.

OKAY, let's think about the etano IM now.  On the plus side for the etano IM device.  I like the ability to send site alerts to all my members via it.  I'd enjoy the control that such a device gives me. It might even be brandable for our respective sites.  

But it isn't gonna be easy to develop and finely tune such a piece of code.  Yahoo, msn, skype and icq have already built the wheel.  Do we need to study the wheel and build another one?  I'm not convinced, by what I've heard to this point, that there are enough pros/benefits to rebuilding the wheel.

A web IM can offer you something that the classic messenger cannot: IM from anywhere. No download needed, just a regular browser.
Projects like meebo.com are immensely popular because of this.
The IM I want to do would be like your own meebo, on your own site.
I'm not eager to reinvent the wheel or work more than necessary, the plan with Etano is to integrate it with existing 3rd parties so if someone else will do such an IM we'll integrate that and that's it.
But for now meebo works on their site only. They do have some widgets you can embed in your site but from that to a full IM for your site it's a long road.

Then there's the userplane webmessenger which is a good IM and offers what meebo doesn't but which lacks good documentation and is pretty limited by default. To enhance it we would have to rewrite the whole client part of it. And it would still be limited.

The actual problem with existing solutions is that they're not what they could be and that all have their limitations/issues.

Anyway, as Maverick says, the IM and contact profile fields are not competing - they both have their niche targets.
And I like the idea of giving the power to share a category to members but there's that conflict I was talking about: share with all friends vs share with paid friends. I have no idea how to solve this conflict to satisfy both you and your members...

I forgot to mention that our own IM could be integrated with yahoo messenger, just like meebo, if we create a solid and well thought framework from the start

It's all quite new to me - once i go outside the messengers/audio that I know well (yahoo, icq and skype).

I had a look at meebo today.  I'm gonna bookmark that site - because it will be very good when I am on holiday.  I'm not sure how etano would look with such a meebo style communication addon built in.  I'd need to see, before I could offer any input. Sceptical so far.

Userplane Webmessenger looks very interesting.  It looks slick.  But I immediately went off it, when I looked at their pricing page.

As you and Maverick say above, the etano IM device and the third party addon, are not in competition.  I think this addon (yahoo, msn, icq, skype) is implementable immediately though; and this then gives you some valuable time to evaluate how to best develop the other etano IM device.

RE: conflict between: share with all friends vs share with paid friends....that is a tough one.  Some thought needed.  I'll grab a beer.

Userplane has ad-supported versions of their webmessenger and webchat.

Last edited by datemill on 2008-02-10 17:46 GMT

I did see the free ad-sponsored version.  But I am never sure as to how long such things remain free.  I'd like more stability/security re any core part of our site/s.

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