Hub Features that would be useful

While writing my articles and partially in writing my book on hubpages blueprint I've been thinking alot about how the system works and can be improved. I don't know if anyone's mentioned any of these, and I can't post in the forum's "comment box" so I thought I'd post my ideas here for you guys to read if you wish.

If anyone likes the idea I invite you to add it to the forum comment box for improving the site..

Specific to current fans but publicly available with a click into a link on the authors profile page?

One of the things I like about social networking sites is the feature of a bulletin board specific to your fan base/friends because it allows you to talk to your fans.

In a case like HubPages it's nice and lucrative to be able to talk to your fans because for example you can tell them when you update articles as the hubtivity says nothing and they may never know or return to check.

Sometimes you want to ask your fans questions so it would be nice to have that interaction capability. An alternative possibility that would be equally as effective (although not as anonymous email address wise) would be the use of a carbon copy email that would link in one email you write every person on your fan base, much like a list works in marketing.

You could click an email link just like you do for each hub author on their profile but instead of emailing just one person you can email a broadcast email to everyone on your list in one swoop. You could tell them of upcoming hubs, ask them what they would like to have you write and so on.

Another thing is the addition of an anonymous email server/system like all the social sites use. People like to keep their personal email private, and shouldn't have to relinquish it just to respond to an email someone sent them through the hubpages system.

When profiles/hubs are updated this should be shown in hubtivity, to all your fans. One thing that is missing is notification to fans of major changes and additions to old hubs you make.

One way to bypass the dynamic capsules showing false updates is to give the author the ability to check a box (add it to the two top check boxes for Adsense disclaimer and this hub is commercial.

When an author updates a page he can check the box stating show this update in hubtivity for my fans. This way its human driven not based on dynamic content and allows the author to notify his fans of updates which can be as exciting as the release itself. If the author just fixed spelling errors someone saw etc.. They simply don't check the box!

They could limit the use of this feature to once a day to avoid the onset of abuse of this feature. Once updated it would go grey so they couldn't check the box as they used up their allocated update privilege.

I believe this would be the easiest to implement and the most useful to authors.

You know how you build a hub but you get to editing it and there it sits in the unpublished queue forever? Then another idea comes and you start a new hub then another, and before you know it you have 20 hubs sitting in the queue fully written but in dire need of some editing and removal of redundancies.

This is my personal quark currently (yep 20 unpublished hubs. problem? too long.. you think what I publish is long? you should take a gander at what I don't publish yet!) What would be nice is having a feature that would (if you checked a box saying to do it, at the hub level or one for show all hubs) publish to your fan base a list of the hubs you're currently working on. It would show just the hubs headliner title.

This would give your fans a preview of upcoming attractions and they could leave a comment to you on the idea "wow this sounds great, when's it coming out?" or "I've been dying to read this are you working on it still?" which could serve to motivate you (knowing people will read it the second you release it) to finish it. I find my problem is I get inspired write the crap out of a long hub then go to bed (as this often takes me all day).. When I wake up the next day a new idea inspires me and I put off editing the other hub as it feels too daunting (yep I get lazy). Inspiration from my fans would help me work on it, and let me know what would be good to create.

One could make a bunch of hubs, add titles they think will be catchy then see what their fan base wants and work on those. The bulletin board idea would help with this as an alternative too. It would keep you and your fans communicating also as a sort of private forum if the forum topics are getting a wee bit out of hand.

Clickable profile picture leading to special profile features like video introduction.

I asked for this awhile back and was told I could use html to insert the video (like YouTube) into the profile but this just is not possible. It would be useful to have the picture load up a popup screen (and using the same effect as that capsule popup screen where the background fades to a white wash look while the video is playing) where you can give your visitors an introduction video of yourself or of you talking with pictures fading in and out.

(see image below to visualize how this would look to your visitor)

Some minors:

Favorites section. Why couldn't hubpages be a Bookmarking site of its own content? (Picture of this one is above)

How about an undo feature or "revert to last saved copy" for when you go to chop a long text capsule into several and accidentally over write the buffer and hit save..? This of all features should be in there where intellectual property is concerned.. Once saved its gone, but its backed up isn't it? Like tonight I went to edit one of my pages and accidentally lost half the page because I forgot to past the buffer of the work into the next capsule before copying something else... sigh..

This will be updated often.. check back for some cool visuals of my ideas. I don't just tell it I show you the feature with pictures using photoshop.. cool huh? (more ps practice for me)..

Thank you for reading my hub :) have a wonderful day.

Jerrico