At a recent partner event here in San Francisco – I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of the Chatter/Communities roadmap for Winter ’15 and beyond.
A new feature “Recommendations in the Feed” got me thinking about some very interesting long term possibilities for Chatter and Communities.
The Feature
Recommendations in Winter ’15 are going to be very basic – just the tip of the iceberg. They will only do two things:
- Recommend groups to join
- Recommend that users setup the “Today” app – and provide an easy button to start that process
Recommendation displayed natively in the feed
The Vision
With only two types of recommendations – it’s likely that most people will breeze past this feature in Winter ’15.
But what if we imagine that recommendations are customizable? Then a number of really interesting possibilities come to mind,
- Marketing/Sales/Support can create recommendations to drive certain behaviors
- Recommendations could target specific types of users
- Recommendations will display natively in the feed and not disrupt the user experience (like a popup or banner)
All you need to do is take one look at how Twitter and Instagram approach native advertising in their feed to realize how valuable a feature like this would be.
The ability to customize these recommendations is likely 2-3 releases away still, but taking the time to think about the future is part of who we are at Perficient.
As always feel free to leave comments or find us on Twitter @Perficient!
