CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Hi folks,
Great to see the new 4.0 release is out.

I wanted to suggest greater social networking integration. I am thinking particularly of Facebook and Twitter (because those are the two we use) and see the benefits from, but I suspect there may be other social platforms that could be added to that list.

For example, currently we manage our events using TicketLeap and Eventbrite, and not on CiviEvent. The main reason is that they provide excellent Facebook integration and other social marketing tools. Both will automatically create an Event page on Facebook, with all the event details and a link to register. Also, on the actual event page--before, and after registration, and in post registration emails) with TicketLeap and Eventbrite it is very easy for people to share the event via FB and Twitter. I know of other event management systems that provide similar functionality. These are just the two we use and like. Through asking our event participants and contacts we have discovered that more than 95% of the people we are dealing with use Facebook (not surprising, considering it's got more than half a billion users). A lesser number use Twitter, but ALL of them also use Facebook and thus serve as another doorway into a multitude of networks on FB where we might otherwise not have any reach.

So Facebook and Twitter naturally make a very good medium for marketing our events, raising public awareness, etc..

I found a thread in the forum where there was discussing getting the widget onto Facebook, although it sounds like the solution may not still work. However, what I am suggesting would be more robust and dynamic than that. I personally think that any business or non-profit that is not making full utilisation of the massive social networks such as Facebook and Twitter are missing out of an opportunity that is cheap (as in FREE) to make use of, and potentially gives them exposure to hundreds of millions of people, relatively effortlessly. I suspect this sort of social network integration has played a significant role in the success of organisations such as Change.org and Avaaz.org (for example).

I would recommend FB and Twitter integration for all relevant aspects of CiviCRM (CiviCampaign, CiviEvent, CiviDonate, etc.)

I would be interested to know if there is any work being done on this, and what other people think about this opportunity.

Regards,

Jonathan

Hey Jonathan:

This comes up periodically and folks are interested in having it as a feature (though no one has contributed code to make this happen as yet!)

Since you do have experience with TicketLeap/EventBrite would be great if you could spec out (with as much detail as possible) how/where CiviEvent would integrate with FaceBook and the various additional details that we can collect and how it is exposed as an FB event etc.

Basically, a detailed spec with all that you know

I suspect this will help some developers sit down and potentially build it. In addition, if your org can help with development and or hire someone to do the needful for CiviEvent that would be super great

lobo