Posted: Friday, August 11th, 2006 at 9:45 pm. Filed in Features, Tags, Uncategorized.
Related Posts from Around WP.com
Update 2: Based on your feedback we’ve fixed a ton of bugs and relaunched the feature as the Tag Surfer.
I just turned on a new beta feature for you guys to try out.
Under your Dashboard next to the stats link, there should be a new menu item called “Related Posts.”
Basically what this does is look at what you write about across all your blogs and then (using tags) tries to find related posts across WordPress.com. The idea is to expose you to folks with similar interests. If you have a preferred language set in your profile it will only show you posts in that language. (Note this only works if the other blogs have correctly self-classified their language.)
In testing I came across a lot of blogs I’d never seen before and ended up leaving comments on each, even if just a “Nice post” to let them know I enjoyed what they were writing.
Anyway, this feature is very “beta” so let us know what you think!
Update: Whoops! There was a typo in the original “push” of this feature that caused the posts to not be related at all. They were completely random. Please try out the feature again if you had a bad experience the first time.
August 11th, 2006 at 9:54 pm
Was surprised to see the new Related post link in my dashboard. Guess was activated few minutes ago.
Most of the related post seem to be interesting. But I could not get a pattern based on which you felt that these post were related to mine. I understand that this is in beta, but I can value-add more in terms of suggestions if you can explain the algo behind the related post.
If you can fine tune to get the related post that one might be interested, then its going to be a huge success. All the best!!
August 11th, 2006 at 9:55 pm
Maybe just a preview instead of the whole post, or maybe just the title and the tags on the post. I like the idea a lot.
August 11th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
WOW! What more can I say Matt except the least which is THANKS!
August 11th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
very cool! thanks!
August 11th, 2006 at 10:16 pm
Sounds pretty cool! Thanks
August 11th, 2006 at 10:19 pm
Interesting idea but did not work for me. I was surprised to find the extra tab in dashbaord and astonished to find what was under the tab. What I found therre was not even remotely related to what my blog writes about.
Don’t mean to be nagative, but I guess the challenege is to do find a way of better matching teh posts.
August 11th, 2006 at 10:25 pm
awesome. will we see this as a widget soon?
August 11th, 2006 at 10:25 pm
Nice feature, and it increases exposure to other blogs. Excellent.
August 11th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
Interesting idea. Surely though that’s what the tag links are for?
I found no posts related to my blog at all, and there were some in foreign languages even though my options are set to English.
August 11th, 2006 at 10:32 pm
Okai
August 11th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
This is cool, but I didn’t really find any related posts. It’s still a cool way to find other blogs, but it seems to me to be a bit redundant if it only relies upon tags. In other words, why not just look at the tag cloud for similar entries? Perhaps I’m missing something.
Some of the “related posts” were not related at all, and some were extremely vulgar, which is nothing along the lines of my blog.
Nevertheless, I still think this is curiously cool, and intriguing.
In other words, keep up the good work, and thanks for offering yet another feature.
August 11th, 2006 at 10:34 pm
Nice post
Does it crawl deep on only the last post(s)? I write about a few very different themes and go only tech posts – my last post is sort o tech/SE.
August 11th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
its nice, sometimes totally unrelated but a lot of good posts come up too
August 11th, 2006 at 10:40 pm
*gives y’all a big metaphorical albeit still heartfelt kiss*
How’s that for an answer?
August 11th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
Great idea to bring people together, especially here at our wp-playground, thanks for that, looks interesting!
August 11th, 2006 at 10:42 pm
An interesting idea, but I’m not sure what related means. I tend to write about ancient history or archaeology. I’m getting some interesting posts about Formula V6 Asia, When Nutjobs Attack and AOL Free, but I’m not sure why.
If more weight is given to tags used it could be a very good feature, but right now it seems like a random selection.
August 11th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
it’s a cool feature to have available. One thing I know is that I’d love to search through more of the blogs out there. This will definitely help. It may also help with topics that are more relevant locally. I’m looking forward to playing around on it!
August 11th, 2006 at 10:55 pm
Sweet, I always want to know if others are writing something similiar.
August 11th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
It’s kind of funny, really…I know, I know, it’s very beta, but that doesn’t change the fact that seeing Spanish posts categorized as similar to mine is hilarious.
August 11th, 2006 at 11:13 pm
Sorry guys – its a nice idea but clicking on the link shows a set of posts that have absolutely no relationship to my blog, or indeed anything remotely interesting to me. If this is a data mining algorithm then it needs some work and I suspect more data.
August 11th, 2006 at 11:17 pm
Don’t see anything similar… like the idea, but so far it’s a dud for me.
August 11th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
Not sure what the algorithm is. Even if you take the top 5 tags (by frequency) and match, you would get better results than what I am getting. Here are the probelms:
1. Do not see how any of the posts I see are related.
2. Even though the language in my profile is “English” I see non-English posts.
August 12th, 2006 at 12:29 am
It is a cool feature, although like others I’m having trouble seeing what some of the ‘related posts’ have to do with mine. But hey, it’s beta.
August 12th, 2006 at 12:31 am
Uh… I saw some of my own posts there… Does it mean I’m related to myself ?
I don’t know if it’s a good idea. So far, I used tags to seek interesting blogs. Maybe the tags page should be even more accessible, directly at the dashboard.
August 12th, 2006 at 1:05 am
I just looked at it (cool feature) but noone was talking about what I was. LOL Looking forward to this feature being further developed.
August 12th, 2006 at 1:07 am
The “related posts” feature sounds like a cool idea, but I’m a bit underwhelmed by the early execution.
I’m seeing the same post duplicated two or three times, and I’m not getting anything that’s really related to what I write about. (I’m seeing a lot of political stuff now, and before I was getting a lot of soccer stuff… I don’t really write about either topic.)
I’ll keep checking it out, but it seems too random right now.
August 12th, 2006 at 1:15 am
i think i’m gonna love what you have just provided for the community.
thanks a lot Matt…
August 12th, 2006 at 1:26 am
I know it’s beta and still has a few kinks but I’m excited over the potential. Yes, I also saw a vulgar post. I think I was more offended by the awful writing than the bad words. Verdict is still out. Did find some interesting posts in my list.
This new feature gives me a chance to check out other blogs and that’s always a cool thing. Thanks.
August 12th, 2006 at 1:28 am
Hey guys, sorry there was a little/big bug that caused the posts to not be related at all. Any relation you saw was completely by chance. Which isn’t a bad thing, but not what this feature was intended to show. Please try it again.
August 12th, 2006 at 1:29 am
Not really digging it. Sorry. Not seeing how any of the so-called related posts are related to anything I’m saying…
August 12th, 2006 at 1:29 am
I think the idea is cool but it doesn’t seem to be working for me. I’m getting foreign languages, I’m getting several posts multiple times, and I’m definitely getting vulgar posts.
August 12th, 2006 at 1:51 am
while I love all the new features being implemented, it is frustrating the way you are laying them out on the menues.
putting the link to related posts where the stats used to be and shoving the others down is just annoying. now every time i go to check the stats i end up on the related page by accident and will take a while to get used to it.
i have only just got used to having the My Dashboards link pushed down by the My Account links on the account bar at the top of my blog.
Thanks for the updates, but please stop moving everything around. If you are going to move it, make it a complete redesign so i can learn it all at once
Peter
August 12th, 2006 at 2:40 am
It’s a neat idea but may cause headache trying to find what I’m looking for. Could it be perhaps WordPress would have a directory of blogs? Creating general categories? And it would be up to the user to categorize their blog? That might be a little easier to find what your looking for reading a music blog from a technology one. Just a idea.
August 12th, 2006 at 3:04 am
Just totally not working for me, so unecessary. Why not make the TOP POST/NEW POST a little more exciting? Say put an excerpt to the post or the author of the blog?
Thanks.
August 12th, 2006 at 3:29 am
Nice idea but not useful as it stands because of the seemingly random way some users assign tags to posts! I’d like to use such a feature, but unless it could be made to work via some sort of post content scan rather than random tag assignment, I’d want to be be able to turn it off if it ever makes it out of beta.
I blog about microbiology, and personally, I like hippies, so the posts it links to are not useful to me!
August 12th, 2006 at 4:04 am
I’m finally starting to see some (somewhat) related posts… I don’t quite know how a Spanish language one slipped in, though.
This should be a cool new feature, once the bugs get worked out.
August 12th, 2006 at 6:02 am
hmm, yeah. what about those out there like Mama Urchin who don’t want to read blogs like mine that are (often more than somewhat) laced with strong language? will there be a way to weed out those connections? i’d rather not offend any more people than i have to, when i need to have myself a little incoherent ranty rant.
August 12th, 2006 at 6:15 am
Great feature, but the relatioship to mine is often vague. Seems to have winkled out a few spammy-looking blogs too. Is it based on tags? Maybe some of mine are a bit broad…
August 12th, 2006 at 6:18 am
Whoa this could be a lot of fun blogging, hope to see it reach a good accuracy soon
August 12th, 2006 at 6:36 am
Good idea! I’ll try it…
August 12th, 2006 at 7:21 am
this is a great concept, but still a lot of tweaking to be done.
i found that even though i had set my options to “english” it still came up with blogs with a different language, and there was stuff about politics… things that i don’t even think to blog about.
August 12th, 2006 at 7:23 am
I just need to refine my ‘research’ category to separate my blog from the health/sickness/medical industry so-called ‘related’ posts. The closest my posts come to any of the related posts is in describing how to grow raw material for wooden legs.
August 12th, 2006 at 7:28 am
Should be nice when this becomes more accurate.
My blog is in Dutch, and *not one* of the related posts is in Dutch
August 12th, 2006 at 7:41 am
Nice Post.
August 12th, 2006 at 8:49 am
I am excited with the feature, as it would open new mean to explore the blogs of fellow bloggers.
But I find that ‘related posts’ are possibly ‘related to tags’ and that is not much helpful as it widens the scope. I believe it should be related to the subject of posts using title of the post as subject, that would narrow the search and more helpful.
Thanks.
August 12th, 2006 at 9:14 am
wow..so sweet …this is exactly Social Community Media
August 12th, 2006 at 9:51 am
Getting better. one more idea can you show an excert instead of the whole post. some of the 2related” posts were very long.
August 12th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Wow … thats great stuff … very handy tool …. how was the response to the adsense test … and do we have any good news guys ?
August 12th, 2006 at 11:12 am
it is really intresting
August 12th, 2006 at 11:32 am
A very nice idea…
August 12th, 2006 at 1:14 pm
It’s working much better for me today. I’m still getting some posts that are pretty old but they at least seem more related to what I write.
August 12th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Here is an idea for an enhancement to WordPress
… Please devise some way of finding the most popular tags – or standard tags.
I understand that one of the great benefits of the tag system is that we can all create our own tags, but it would be helpful to know which are the most popular versions of tags for particular interests.
For instance, in dealing with “environment”, there would be variations of the word (ie “environmental”) and also mixed tags (”environmental” + pollution) etc.
Maybe not the best examples, but you get my point.
August 12th, 2006 at 2:14 pm
Great work! It’s interesting.
Day by day, WordPress becomes good and interesting.
Efforts of the members of development are appreciated！
Thanks a lot.
August 12th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
Great idea, one of the posts was really interesting and I’ll be checking out the blog, however I also got a load of pictures of someones cat and some knitting? In a way having something very random like this is nice too
WordPress just keeps getting better and better, Thanks
August 12th, 2006 at 4:32 pm
Looking good. I did see a couple of foreign posts in there. Other than that, they were related (guess a lot of folks are talking about politics). Like others, I suggest an excerpt instead of the whole post. Further, it would be nice to filter by country, in addition to language.
August 12th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
In a nutshell I like this idea but at present I am getting a dog’s breakfast rather than directly related posts.
Secondly I do not wish to have more than five links to the most directly related posts. I don’t want the whole posts thanks just the links will be fine.
Thirdly I have two very different blogs but I am getting the same “roll” of predominantly unrelated posts on both blogs. I would like only links to directly related posts which are blog specific.
Fourthly I would like the button removed to the far right of my dashboard as it’s in an inconvenient spot right now.
Here are my responses http://wordpress.com/forums/topic.php?id=3369&replies=9
http://wordpress.com/forums/topic.php?id=3372&replies=4
August 12th, 2006 at 6:01 pm
cool.. thanks for making it easy to track similar posts or interests.
August 12th, 2006 at 6:29 pm
This is a great idea! Any chance you can make the listing into an RSS Feed?
August 13th, 2006 at 6:29 am
This is is great. However long post takes all the space. Why not show the excerpts only.
Again, Thank you.
August 13th, 2006 at 6:59 am
I like the way this link helps all users enjoy the ‘community’ that *is* WordPress even more-so than before! I look forward to seeing what else is developed over time, thanks for great stuff!
August 13th, 2006 at 7:37 am
By re-naming a couple of my categories, I now have only related posts showing up – all one of them! My next trick is to write on a new category in which I’m interested, and see if a better balance comes up. This feature could be fun.
August 13th, 2006 at 10:11 am
Hey guys check out the new version:
http://wordpress.com/blog/2006/08/13/related-tag-surfer/
August 13th, 2006 at 10:23 am
I was intriged by the new button so clicked and actually found some v interesting blogs that i’ll be reading! It’ll definitely add more to WordPress because you can just read blogs similar to your own instead of sifting through the ‘latest posts’ or tags.
yay for wordpress!!
August 13th, 2006 at 7:38 pm
Matt, I like it. I think it will be improved by isolating the particular tags we are actually interested in surfing. Which brings me to a question: why not have this on a post by post basis, and viewable on my blog itself. So, if I blog on, say “Boston Red Sox,” what about having the ability to go right from that post and check out what others are blogging about the Sox?
August 17th, 2006 at 1:38 am
The page’s a bit screwed up while browsing it in Firefox. Weird…
December 30th, 2006 at 9:04 am
Its a good try from wordpress.com. I’ll be appriciate that one.