Find My Friends

Hi,

I've posted this originally as a forum item: others thought it's a great idea and recommented that I should ask the maintainers of this Invite module. Then, I posted it as a feature request to DCL importer (because technically it is closer to them), but didn't get replies from them. But then on a second thought, I realsed that this is actually closer to Invite module, than DCL Importer. So now I'm asking you, the maintainers of the Invite module, to see if you could develop a sub-module which is a MUST for any social-networking or even a small community site: Find My Friends!

So basically what I'm proposing is a module that will help people find their existing real-life friends by checking their existing Hotmail, Gmail, Facebook or any other e-mail account??? A feature that we see as a standard and the most essential 2nd step after registration in Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter and a 1000+ other websites that we never heard of..

I'm running a community-driven website, which has some very basic social networking features (PM, Buddylist, OG).

But this is what I notice: people create their account and then don't know quite what to do. Statistics show that, very often they'll go to "Community" link which is nothing more than something like www.drupal.org/profile. Why do they go there? They go there in search of people they might already know. This is what we humans do when we first walk into a room full of strangers: look for someone we already know in real life! So that we can say "Hey, cool, so you're here too! Let's be in each other's buddylist" And cyber-environment is no different.

So what if there was a module that will let you enter your e-mail username, choose the e-mail provider (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo and why not Facebook), let you enter your password of that external service, and then go out there into user's e-mail addressbook, or Facebook or MySpace friends list, get those e-mail addresses, compare these e-mail addresses with those of the already registred users, and finally present you with a list with avatars, usernames on the site and their "real names" in the e-mail addressbook ... with an option to "+ Add to my Friends" (integration with Buddylist or User Relations).

BUT those e-mail addresses that do not appear in the database, will appear below as a lost of Real Names (fetched from the e-mail) with checkboxes next to them -- with an option to invite those friends who are not already here. One of the most nead ways of doing this is the way that StumbleUpon is doing it.

Is there such a module??? I've searched and searched and I'm surprised that out of thousands of Drupal modules, not a single module fullfils one those features that is a MUST on any site full of strangers, and that is a standard 2nd step on any community site today.

The module that I found to be closest to this kind of behaviour is DCL_importer, BUT, it's in .dev, it doesn't look like it has been updated in a long time, it's results interface is NOT intuitive and NOT user-friendly (people have complained that they don't know what to do), AND is only for fetching the e-mail's addressbook and inserting them into the invitation field. I've posted a feature request there, but didn't receive any reply. I'm starting to get the feeling that DCL is an abandoned project.

The really closest in its logic to this feature request is the fact that the Invite module itself integrates with Buddylist: "People you invite will automatically be added to your buddylist". So why not take this logic one step further: "Who out of these people with criptic usernames is a persom whom I'm know from real life and whould be interested to add to my buddylist?" Find those friends through my e-mail and facebook!" And for those who are still not registred on the site, provide checkbox next to each and an "INVITE THESE FRIENDS TO !SITENAME.COM" button at the bottom.

I know that you are very busy right now. But what do you think of this sub-module idea????