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!
Posted: Monday, November 20th, 2006 at 4:03 pm. Filed in Community, Dashboard, New Features, WordPress.com.
Nov 20th at 5:18 pm
Nifty, folks! I’m diggin’ the keyboard shortcuts especially.
Nov 20th at 5:33 pm
cool!!
Nov 20th 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.
Nov 20th at 6:02 pm
Neat! Now I just have to get friends!
Nov 20th 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?
Nov 20th 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!
Nov 20th at 6:16 pm
really neat feature. thank you. I’ve tried it out with two names and it’s working just fine.
Nov 20th 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)
Nov 20th at 6:19 pm
Interesting…
Nov 20th at 6:21 pm
This is a great idea and will make it easier to keep up with WordPress friends. Thanks!
Nov 20th at 6:22 pm
I’ve just seen this pretty new feature.
Really cool, thank you
Nov 20th 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.
Nov 20th at 6:50 pm
ahh, this is really handy.
life made easier. ^^
Nov 20th at 7:00 pm
Wow a community and networking option..pretty cool… What next…:)
Nov 20th at 7:14 pm
Great Feature again!!!
Nov 20th 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?
Nov 20th 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.
Nov 20th 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.
Nov 20th at 9:26 pm
Ahah WordPress-spy finally!
j/k will give it a whirl though
Nov 20th at 9:33 pm
Now that is a good add on!
Thanks guys.
Nov 20th 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?
Nov 20th at 10:00 pm
That is great
Thanks 
I love you ppl
Nov 20th at 10:05 pm
wow
even new stuff on my birthday hehehe
Nov 20th 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).
Nov 20th at 10:31 pm
This a great new tool, thanks wordpress!
Nov 20th at 10:41 pm
does this mean that i can now monitor the moves of all my “friends”?
Nov 20th at 10:45 pm
This is a good feature! thank you very much!
Nov 20th 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!
Nov 21st at 12:12 am
Interesting, Thanks!
Nov 21st 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.
Nov 21st 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
Nov 21st 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.
Nov 21st at 12:55 am
Ace! Love this feature. ^^
Nov 21st at 2:00 am
So thats why the wordpress team was silent throughout this month.
Great work Donncha.
Nov 21st at 2:20 am
I’ll give it a try.
Nov 21st 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.
Nov 21st at 2:47 am
!!
great function.
it’s help to connect the wp citizen.
thanks.
Nov 21st 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
Nov 21st at 3:38 am
Neato! Thanks for the great little tool. WordPress does it again!
Nov 21st at 4:26 am
Nice one.. I love it.
Nov 21st at 4:41 am
This seems another exciting feature!!
Nov 21st 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!
Nov 21st 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!
Nov 21st 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 !
Nov 21st at 6:25 am
Will immediately check this out!
First post! LOL!
Nov 21st at 6:28 am
Wow! A great surfing experince!
You guys at Wp rock!
Thanks thanks..
Best Smile,
Zeezat
Nov 21st at 7:06 am
greet, does it just work for blog at wordpress.com?
Nov 21st at 8:01 am
Enemies? *Gulp* This should be interesting.
Nov 21st 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!
Nov 21st 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.
Nov 21st at 9:59 am
Niceeee:)
Nov 21st at 10:11 am
I also wish I could delete, I just added the wrong Robert Scoble.
Nov 21st at 10:19 am
Thanks! Nice idea!!!I must try it….it’s a lot that we didn’t read wordpress news!!
Astasia
Nov 21st at 10:52 am
Thanks for the service. I love the dashboard.
Nov 21st at 11:59 am
Cool feature, can keep track of all my enem… ahem friends posts
Nov 21st 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.
Nov 21st at 12:20 pm
I have to find one~ now
Nov 21st at 1:58 pm
Well done. A nice addition
Nov 21st at 2:01 pm
Nov 21st at 3:04 pm
Cool feature… WP rocks!!!! \m/
Nov 21st at 3:54 pm
Unuseful. You better add favion changing feature.
!
I know, that you’re still developing it, but release it
Nov 21st at 4:08 pm
Really nice idea
Nov 21st at 4:22 pm
What an interesting idea and a gud `un too!!
Nov 21st 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?
Nov 21st at 6:58 pm
Brilliant! Lets me keep track of everyone’s page from the comfort of one page.
Nov 21st 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.
Nov 21st at 11:18 pm
awesome since rss doesn’t work for me all the time.
-BRian
Nov 22nd at 7:47 am
Thanks, guys, that feature is very useful for me! =)
Nov 22nd at 10:21 pm
to cool
thanks a lot
Nov 23rd at 3:45 pm
The ‘j’ and ‘k’ surfing is kinda cool
Nov 23rd at 7:49 pm
great, this one looks nifty indeed.
Nov 24th at 6:48 pm
Excelent!
Nov 25th at 2:36 am
its nice to see constant improvements. im glad i found you wordpress.
Nov 29th at 2:44 pm
great feature!
thanks bro!!
Nov 30th at 9:26 am
Nice improvement, excellent work…
Dec 3rd at 6:26 am
This really sounds good
Dec 4th at 11:33 pm
Sounds good to me. Will check it out.
Dec 7th at 7:58 pm
I’m new and still developing my page, I can check that sooner i’m sure.Good Job WordPress