Build a "Find Friends" feature

[circuitfive]

This is a common feature that every social network needs, it usually goes like this..

1. User clicks on "Find Friends" to easily locate all of his/her contacts that are already on the social network
2. They upload their address book
3. They get a list of everyone in their address book that is on the social network and a convenient button to follow/connect/friend request all of them at once
4. They get an option to send invitations to everyone who's NOT here to help make the network stronger

3 and 4 will require some way to Select/Unselect people since not everyone is always going to want to follow or invite everyone.

This was casually mention in the upstream repo issues by Boone himself here: boonebgorges#139

[boonebgorges]

We'll need some UI concepts on the front-end and back-end.

On the front end, BuddyPress's built-in Friends feature can only be triggered on a per-user basis. So, if you're looking at a member directory, you can click 'Add Friend' next to a specific user. Or if you're looking at user's profile, you can add them as a friend there. There's no non-user-specific place in the info architecture to say "I'd like to add friends". So we'll need to add one somewhere. Invite Anyone already adds a 'Send Invites' menu to user navigation, so perhaps the interface could be on the existing tab, or in an additional tab "Find Friends". Then, this tab could be linked from the Members directory, from the user's Friend list, from the admin bar, etc.

On the back end, we need to make decisions about what kinds of settings there'll be. A single toggle could be added to an existing admin panel. But if there are more settings - like maximum numbers of friend invites - we may want a new tab. But the toggle and other related settings should only be enabled if CloudSponge integration is set up. We also need to decide how and whether the settings on 'Access Control' - max number of invitations, etc - are inherited by 'Find Friends', or whether it would have its own set of parallel settings, or whether sending friend requests to existing users is different enough from network invites that we don't need to have restrictions at all.

[circuitfive]

Front-end

My vote is for a new tab "Find Friends" in the user navigation beside the "Send Invites" tab that is being added by Invite Anyone.

Back-end

My vote is for a new tab here as well with its own separate settings that shouldn't be confused with the "Send Invites" settings since they're quite different use cases.

I think the implication here is that the global CloudSponge settings (i.e. API key, proxy URL) would need to escalate to a higher level, like to somewhere in the "General Settings" tab.

[circuitfive]

Nudging this feature, I think it's worth the investment if we can quantify the effort required @dimitarangelkov.