Announcing the Friend Surfer
When you visit your WordPress.com Dashboard you’ll see a new link on the menu called “Friend Surfer”. This handy little tool is where you can keep track of what your friends, acquintances and enemies are saying from the comfort of one single page.
There’s a small textbox on the left hand side of the page where you can add new contacts. If you’re not familiar with anyone here on the site, try any or all of the following for a good read: scobleizer, donal, lorelle. It’s important to realise that you’re adding usernames, not blog addresses. “donncha” will work, but “donncha.wordpress.com” won’t!
Since it’s impossible to subscribe to private blogs through a regular RSS aggregator you can view the private blogs you’re a member of on this page too. They’re listed separately from your contacts for ease of use.
Shortcuts
There are a few shortcuts you might like to know about.
- Click on the number next a username and the page will only display posts from that user. Click the number again and the page returns to the full posts display.
- You can use the ‘j’ and ‘k’ keys to skip forwards and backwards through the posts on your friend surfer. Press ‘i’ to jump right up to the top again.
Give the Friend Surfer a spin and remember to leave some feedback if you have a great idea to make it better!
Email Newsletter

November 20th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
Nifty, folks! I’m diggin’ the keyboard shortcuts especially.
November 20th, 2006 at 5:33 pm
cool!!
November 20th, 2006 at 5:46 pm
Great feature! WordPress is really developing into something even bigger and better real fast these days. Woho! My needs are pleased.
November 20th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Neat! Now I just have to get friends!
November 20th, 2006 at 6:06 pm
excellent, i’ve wanted this for a long time.
question, though. how do you find out a person’s name if it’s not the *.wordpress.com name? for instance, i keep getting ‘friend not found’ when i try to add ‘thealternakids‘.
is there only one name for all the blogs a person has?
November 20th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
This looks great. I just added several of my favorite WordPress bloggers and voila, I could see all their latest posts from the past 12 hours – all in one place.
Thanks for all you do!
November 20th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
really neat feature. thank you. I’ve tried it out with two names and it’s working just fine.
November 20th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
I haven’t tried it out yet… but when we’re looking at other wordpress.com blogs would it be possible to have “Blog Info >> Add to Friends List” from the top menu bar? (like Add to Blogroll)
November 20th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
Interesting…
November 20th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
This is a great idea and will make it easier to keep up with WordPress friends. Thanks!
November 20th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
I’ve just seen this pretty new feature.
Really cool, thank you
November 20th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
Thanks for the plug. I’ve managed to add your blog but it won’t let me add laubschr (http://laubschr.wordpress.com/) an excellent photo blog. It says user not found.
November 20th, 2006 at 6:50 pm
ahh, this is really handy.
life made easier. ^^
November 20th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Wow a community and networking option..pretty cool… What next…:)
November 20th, 2006 at 7:14 pm
Great Feature again!!!
November 20th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
Was this needed? If people do not know how to bookmark or add to their blogroll,how useful is this really?
November 20th, 2006 at 8:41 pm
I would be great if you could integrate some kind of search with this, I love it, but it’s not intuitive.
November 20th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Great feature. Cool, easy, useful, excellent.
It doesn’t work with my username – I didn’t expect that since everything is in my dashboard, but I am writing it down so that other users are not going to spend their time uselessly.
Thanks, again.
November 20th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
Ahah WordPress-spy finally!
j/k will give it a whirl though
November 20th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
Now that is a good add on!
Thanks guys.
November 20th, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Pretty neat. One question though…. if a user has more than just one blog… how would you add the other blog to your friend surfer? Or is that possible?
November 20th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
That is great
Thanks 
I love you ppl
November 20th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
wow
even new stuff on my birthday hehehe
November 20th, 2006 at 10:07 pm
Might be useful if I read private blogs. Otherwise, why bother, feeds are so much more comprehensive (I know you’re trying to take over the blogging world, but there are quite a few people(!) who haven’t switched to WP.com).
November 20th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
This a great new tool, thanks wordpress!
November 20th, 2006 at 10:41 pm
does this mean that i can now monitor the moves of all my “friends”?
November 20th, 2006 at 10:45 pm
This is a good feature! thank you very much!
November 20th, 2006 at 11:22 pm
c’est trés cool! now i don’t have to keep clicking on my links to read my friends’ blogs. it’s a different angle to the tag surfer which is excellent!
November 21st, 2006 at 12:12 am
Interesting, Thanks!
November 21st, 2006 at 12:20 am
Thar’s a nice idea. A different way to check out what’s going on with the users you like. I like a lot.
November 21st, 2006 at 12:28 am
It would be so easy to add those in our blogroll IF you offered some sort of link to that blogroll. Otherwise, it means going back and forth, back and forth, to add everyone to the friend surfer. Hope you can devise something that would allow just a click and everyone in our blogrolls are added to our Friend Surfer.
http://bonnieq.wordpress.com
November 21st, 2006 at 12:48 am
An ‘add to friend surfer’ link under blog info on the WP bar would be helpful. It saves having to guess that ajcann is the username for microbiologybytes.wordpress.com and similar.
November 21st, 2006 at 12:55 am
Ace! Love this feature. ^^
November 21st, 2006 at 2:00 am
So thats why the wordpress team was silent throughout this month.
Great work Donncha.
November 21st, 2006 at 2:20 am
I’ll give it a try.
November 21st, 2006 at 2:23 am
So it’s just like the tag surfer except with your friends blogs etc? I love this idea guys. Doesn’t appear to be working for me yet though I’m sure you’re still ironing out some bugs etc.
November 21st, 2006 at 2:47 am
!!
great function.
it’s help to connect the wp citizen.
thanks.
November 21st, 2006 at 3:11 am
Nice!
This keeps me from having to surf an ungodly amount of pages just to see who’s written what. Nice job, again
November 21st, 2006 at 3:38 am
Neato! Thanks for the great little tool. WordPress does it again!
November 21st, 2006 at 4:26 am
Nice one.. I love it.
November 21st, 2006 at 4:41 am
This seems another exciting feature!!
November 21st, 2006 at 4:54 am
Wow!! This is a fantastic tool! I like…no I LOVE it.
A request though… is it possible to shift the “Incoming Links” list to the Blogroll tab, since Blogroll deals with links?
Anyways, thanks for all the hard work, WordPress! Keep it up!
November 21st, 2006 at 5:41 am
Hmm..though it sounds complex at first, it sure is a nifty feature. Previously I used to visit the blogs via moi Blogroll or open them in new tabs to check them out! But Now I can see the new posts my ‘regular-reads’ have made all in one page.
You Rock!
November 21st, 2006 at 6:24 am
Wow Great !! I Was just thinking the other day as how to keep track of good content on wordpress without adding it to BlogRoll.
Great idea (and Tx for the quicky shortcut keys !!!)
Note : just a little query , what is the easiest way to add a blog that has its own Domain name, for eg I was trying to add this blog but webworkerdaily returned – user not found. Am I missing something !
November 21st, 2006 at 6:25 am
Will immediately check this out!
First post! LOL!
November 21st, 2006 at 6:28 am
Wow! A great surfing experince!
You guys at Wp rock!
Thanks thanks..
Best Smile,
Zeezat
November 21st, 2006 at 7:06 am
greet, does it just work for blog at wordpress.com?
November 21st, 2006 at 8:01 am
Enemies? *Gulp* This should be interesting.
November 21st, 2006 at 9:03 am
This new feature is FANTASTIC! It solves all of my problems as the Tag Surfer feature does not work for any of my blogs
. This new feature will enable me to stay informed about what is going on in the other blogs I like… Thank you!
November 21st, 2006 at 9:42 am
Some people may feel a little paranoid with this feature. I would rather not have people be able to see what I leave on other pages, personally.
November 21st, 2006 at 9:59 am
Niceeee:)
November 21st, 2006 at 10:11 am
I also wish I could delete, I just added the wrong Robert Scoble.
November 21st, 2006 at 10:19 am
Thanks! Nice idea!!!I must try it….it’s a lot that we didn’t read wordpress news!!
Astasia
November 21st, 2006 at 10:52 am
Thanks for the service. I love the dashboard.
November 21st, 2006 at 11:59 am
Cool feature, can keep track of all my enem… ahem friends posts
November 21st, 2006 at 12:13 pm
yay! this is great!!
cant wait to try it out.
it would be cool if we could also see who added us as friends.
November 21st, 2006 at 12:20 pm
I have to find one~ now
November 21st, 2006 at 1:58 pm
Well done. A nice addition
November 21st, 2006 at 2:01 pm
November 21st, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Cool feature… WP rocks!!!! \m/
November 21st, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Unuseful. You better add favion changing feature.
!
I know, that you’re still developing it, but release it
November 21st, 2006 at 4:08 pm
Really nice idea
November 21st, 2006 at 4:22 pm
What an interesting idea and a gud `un too!!
November 21st, 2006 at 4:51 pm
to quote one of my favorite plays, {proof}:”In order to have one’s friends take you out, you must first have friends.” or something like that. I guess I need to come up with some friends to fill up my Friend Surfer, huh?
November 21st, 2006 at 6:58 pm
Brilliant! Lets me keep track of everyone’s page from the comfort of one page.
November 21st, 2006 at 7:47 pm
i’m so glad i gave up my hosting plan and decided to move here.
things get better all the time, thanks.
November 21st, 2006 at 11:18 pm
awesome since rss doesn’t work for me all the time.
-BRian
November 22nd, 2006 at 7:47 am
Thanks, guys, that feature is very useful for me! =)
November 22nd, 2006 at 10:21 pm
to cool
thanks a lot
November 23rd, 2006 at 3:45 pm
The ‘j’ and ‘k’ surfing is kinda cool
November 23rd, 2006 at 7:49 pm
great, this one looks nifty indeed.
November 24th, 2006 at 6:48 pm
Excelent!
November 25th, 2006 at 2:36 am
its nice to see constant improvements. im glad i found you wordpress.
November 29th, 2006 at 2:44 pm
great feature!
thanks bro!!
November 30th, 2006 at 9:26 am
Nice improvement, excellent work…
December 3rd, 2006 at 6:26 am
This really sounds good
December 4th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Sounds good to me. Will check it out.
December 7th, 2006 at 7:58 pm
I’m new and still developing my page, I can check that sooner i’m sure.Good Job WordPress