Contact Import/Grabber

Worker Joined: Feb 14, 2008 Posts: 123

Is it possible to have a contact importer for msn/yahoo/etc to use when new users sign up they are refered to a page to input there email and send requests to there contacts on the list. I know other website do this but just wondered how you would get such a thing onto a website to do this, can anyone help with this?

Danny

Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6432

Welcome. Are you saying that it would import contacts from msn, yahoo, etc. and send email to those contacts? Not sure that's a good thing - it might be treated like spam. Where have you seen this?

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 8:20 am

No when you sign upto a website it gives you the option to show which of your contacts are already members of your website by putting your email in and if they not you can select them from the list of your contacts to send requests to join your website with them. Myspace does this, it's not spam or anything it's just telling your contacts/friends that they are registered with a website and you can join them and sign up to the website also. Do you know what I mean?
How do you do this if it's possible?

Thanks
Danny

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 9:26 am

With myspace, facebook and others of their kind, you have to search first before it will tell you if there is another member that has already joined.
Personally I hate that sort of thing, as it IS technically spam - you are sending unsolicited mail.
Nuke doesn't do anything like this but at a push, you could maybe create a news post telling people about your site, then others could send that news item to their friends using the 'Send to Friend' link.

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 9:46 am

Well technically it isn't spam because the user has the option to send it, it's not forced upon or sent by anyone else. Here is an example of what it is, I'm sure you've all come across it at some point on a website.

http://www.ladslads.com/FindFriends/default.aspx

Danny[/url]

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 1:56 pm

You could always try posting in the 'Seeking Applications' forum to see if anoyne would be willing to write something like that for you - for a fee.
As far as I'm aware there is nothing like that for nuke.

With regard to spam - please see this definition [ Only registered users can see links on this board! Get registered or login! ]

As you can see from that definition, if I was to use that functionality to send out 'come and join me' requests to several people, one after the other, technically that would make me a spammer.
On the bright side though, most sites like MySpace, Facebook etc have disclaimers for this exact reason when you sign up with them to inform you that you are agreeing to people sending you these types of emails.

All I'm saying is, be careful in using these sorts of things if there are no disclaimers in place.

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 3:01 pm

Sorry if I posted this in the wrong section, I only just signed up the other day so don't know much about the forums and stuff. Well I didn't think it was spam if the user is willing to send it and give consent :s which I said in the other reply. I will look into it though.

Thanks for the information

Danny

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 3:26 pm

No problem at all and welcome to this site, it's great support and community spirit.
I'm a bit like a rabied dog near a lake whenever spam gets mentioned so forgive my 'enthusiasm' Wink

I think your post might give others an excellent idea for a future module so who knows, perhaps someone might take it up Smile

Posted: Fri Feb 15, 2008 4:53 pm

Quote:

MSN Invitation Module 1.0 - This module allows you to list msn contacts and then send each one (or a selection of) an invitation to visit your website. Your members and/or visitors can simply enter their msn login and then spread the word to their friends

This looks like it might be along the lines of what you're looking for, at least for MSN.