Posted: Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010 at 8:35 pm. Filed in Social, WordPress.com.
Tags: Features, likes, subscriptions
Discover who likes your posts
Months ago we added the ability for readers to like your posts, and ever since thousands of people have been liking posts every day. But something was missing: there was no way for post authors to discover when someone liked something they’d written. Or even when someone new subscribed to the entire blog.
Today, these problems have been solved: We’ve added two new email notifications, one for likes and one for subscriptions.
Post authors will receive an email notification from WordPress.com, telling them which post was liked and who it was. And blog owners will receive an email when someone new subscribes to their blog. This gives instant feedback every time your post or blog gets some positive attention.
If email notifications are not for you, no problem. You can turn these notifications off by going to Dashboard→Settings→Discussion and deactivating the appropriate checkbox under “Email me whenever”.
And if you have a particularly active blog, we decided to leave some features off by default so you wouldn’t be annoyed. You can turn them on if you wish as described above. More details can be found in the support page for email notifications.
November 24th, 2010 at 6:36 am
Will this like function implement into the stats system in wordpress, it will be easier to look at as all our view stats are in the stat system?
Is this email system notifies every time a person likes? or they actually compile a list of people like a month?
November 24th, 2010 at 8:13 am
We’re looking into ways to integrate more with existing stats pages. You will get an email every time a user likes one of your posts.
November 24th, 2010 at 6:40 am
I cnn’t fellow all. I’m alone for a big blog and I cann’t have times to discover all fonctions. :-/
November 24th, 2010 at 7:02 am
I love this new improvement. Everytime i receive such an email telling me someone liked my post, i feel thrilled so much. Thank you wordpress.com team.
November 24th, 2010 at 7:16 am
This is great news as now I won’t need to check periodically. Thank you for finding ways to make the site even better!
November 24th, 2010 at 8:51 am
Wrote a post some time ago indicating that readers could “like” my posts if they chose to do so. So far only 1 response. Either they don’t care to take the time, or I’m missing the mark on what I write. Kudos to those who are “liked” a lot. Congrats, and keep making your readers happy! And Happy Thanksgiving, wordpress. Thanks for giving me a platform from which to share…hugmamma.
November 24th, 2010 at 8:54 am
Excellent, I’ve only just started 3 blogs and am really enjoying it – the additional features will be very welcome.
November 24th, 2010 at 9:07 am
GreaT work. Thank you.
November 24th, 2010 at 9:12 am
clever idea, excellent facility…thank you…
November 24th, 2010 at 9:39 am
This enhancement gives hope to those of us who would like to see more meaningful site statistics from WP – such as “unique visitors.” Since you only report to us “page views” we don’t whether we’ve had 20 visitors or 1 visitor who viewed 20 pages. These more meaningful stats would enable us to improve our blogs, improve the experience for our site visitors, and drive more usage (which, of course, helps WP). By contrast, knowing the identity of someone who “liked” is far less valuable. In fact, in my case, I do not want to know any of the identities of people who visit my blog but I very much want to know how they are using the site so that I can serve them better.
November 24th, 2010 at 9:58 am
Liked!
November 24th, 2010 at 10:03 am
That’s good you will know that you are appreciated for your efforts.
November 24th, 2010 at 10:12 am
i want my f-like and wordpress like to be integrated; any suggestions?
November 24th, 2010 at 10:24 am
In order to reblog a post you like you now have to first click the Like button and then select reblog. Could WP maken this a one click feature or even a ( optional) special button ?
November 24th, 2010 at 11:02 am
We’re planning on working more on the reblogging features, so watch this space.
November 24th, 2010 at 10:55 am
Wait, so when someone subscribes using the ‘subscribe’ button at the top of the page; I get to know who that is?
Slightly related: When I get a visitor from a ‘WordPress Dashboard’, is there a way of finding out who that is?
November 24th, 2010 at 11:03 am
Correct for the first, not at the moment for the second.
November 24th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
Nice! But just as important to me is knowing who has just unsubscribed from my blog. I wish we could get a notification for that too.
November 24th, 2010 at 2:05 pm
The ‘Like’ notification email also gives away your gravatar and location?! Can’t these other stuff remain private?
November 24th, 2010 at 7:07 pm
Hi Randomize: your basic gravatar profile information was already public, as that’s what gravatar profiles are for. You can read more about Gravatars here: http://en.gravatar.com/
Your location is only a rough approximation generated from your IP address, which is information already given to a blog when someone visits.
November 24th, 2010 at 3:16 pm
Sounds like a great idea, just hope I figure out how to use it.
November 24th, 2010 at 3:22 pm
I am glad to see this feature…thank you.
November 24th, 2010 at 3:47 pm
as a blog reader, I’m a bit rattled by all the information that goes out to the blog author, particularly your best guess at my geographical location. How can I disable that? I’m trying to protect my privacy as a blog reader. I don’t want to not “like” someone’s post thru wordpress, but if I can’t turn off my hometown, I won’t use the function anymore.
thanks!
November 24th, 2010 at 7:03 pm
We understand your concern, however we are only using information already made available to blog owners. A readers email address and IP address were already made available to blog owners through the comments list in the dashboard.
All we are doing is a very basic lookup of the IP address, which can be mapped loosely to geographical areas, such as the nearest major city and state, but not any more specific. . You can find services on the web that do the same thing, as it’s part of how IP addresses work. There are many free services on the web (such as this one) that do the same thing.
Leaving a comment on any blog or website usually requires an email address and an IP address, so you were already giving this information to blog owners, just not in this format.
November 24th, 2010 at 4:09 pm
Neat, but does it HAVE to be an email notification? Would much rather click on it in WP itself.
November 24th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Thanks for the suggestion Steve. We’ll keep this in mind.
November 24th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
Great new tools to connect us with those that have interest in our content. Much appreciated!!
November 24th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
Good features.
November 24th, 2010 at 5:05 pm
Clear and to the point. Nicely done.
November 24th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Good idea. Thanks
November 24th, 2010 at 5:40 pm
This is great. Thanks
November 24th, 2010 at 6:39 pm
Hi, i’m pretty new here…and like what i see !
November 24th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
I received my first email about a new subscriber this morning and it surprised me since I never got one before. Now I know why I got it, and I’m thrilled this service is now up and running. I must say, I don’t understand the whining about getting “more email.” Perhaps those who get so much email about traffic on their blog might be better off with a service that actually costs something?
Thanks, WordPress. I will be mentioning your name at T’giving tomorrow when we go around the table and name the things we’re thankful for this year.
November 24th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
I don’t mind seeing what states or countries people are from..it’s just a little weird getting down to the city level guessing.
Otherwise, I don’t have a problem with it.
November 24th, 2010 at 7:50 pm
So what about posts that were liked before this was instated? I assume those likes are untraceable, correct?
November 24th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
I don’t just “like” this, I “love” this idea!
November 24th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
Thank you. That is a great addition.
November 24th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
I don’t see any place on my blog page for people to click “like.” Do I have to activate it? If so, how do I do that?
December 6th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
To turn on likes, go to Settings->Sharing.
November 24th, 2010 at 10:05 pm
That’s great! I hope someday to be on the receiving end of this useful new feature. (sighs, wipes away tear)
November 24th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
That’s great!
November 24th, 2010 at 10:44 pm
I still don’t know how to find out how many subscribers I have. Do I have to turn something on to get this? And I have trouble understand exactly what my blog can do. It might be just me, but it doesn’t seem easy to figure out.
November 25th, 2010 at 12:06 am
love this! thanks.
November 25th, 2010 at 12:16 am
Thank you for the info. and for giving us a way to deactivate e-mail notifications if we’d like.
November 25th, 2010 at 12:24 am
How about just letting me find out through the Dashboard or Site Stats instead of a tedious e-mail?
December 6th, 2010 at 6:25 pm
You can find a list of your subscribers by going to Dashboard -> Settings -> Site stats, scroll down to general, click on the subscriber number, and you’ll see a list of current subscribers.
November 25th, 2010 at 1:09 am
…
November 25th, 2010 at 1:51 am
Nice idea!
Thanks WP
November 25th, 2010 at 2:49 am
I ‘m new to wordpress and this information helps me alot.
Thank you,
November 25th, 2010 at 3:04 am
hello.. too all
November 25th, 2010 at 3:10 am
it’s great.. good job.. thanks for this..
November 25th, 2010 at 3:13 am
Yay! (I couldn’t believe there was no email notification for subscriptions!)
Finally!
November 25th, 2010 at 3:37 am
I think I like this,
November 25th, 2010 at 3:39 am
what would make this better is if we had stats on where we are getting our readers, like geographical/regional and how long people stay on our blog site. The stats we have right now are fine for begginers, but it is awfully limited. Knowing how many new readers click on our blog or people who have never been on our site before would be nice as well. When will we have this?! This technology is not dificult to incorporate. I can guess my avg age of readers are middle aged, but how can I be sure? It would be nice to know these aforementioned facts or stats to know my target audience.
December 6th, 2010 at 6:23 pm
First, keep in mind it’s a bit more complicated to “incorporate technology” across 15 million blogs than you suspect. It can be trickier than you think
Second, we don’t know the kind of information you’re asking for: the age of a reader is private information, and its information we typically don’t even have.
But I understand your general point: you’d like better data about who is reading your blog.
November 25th, 2010 at 3:44 am
I just read some of the comments above. Let me explain that I DON’T want to know the identity or the IP address of my visitors. I respect their privacy. I just want to serve them better with better and more meaningful stats.
November 25th, 2010 at 4:01 am
Wonderful update to already rockin’ software! Thanx and Happy Thanksgiving to the best team out there!
Joanna Aislinn
NO MATTER WHY
The Wild Rose Press
http://www.joannaaislinn.com
http://www.joannaaislinn.wordpress.com
November 25th, 2010 at 4:15 am
i like
November 25th, 2010 at 5:00 am
Please like me!!!!
This is good.
November 25th, 2010 at 5:07 am
Thanks, I was just thinking how much better it would be if we got email notifications of “likes.”
November 25th, 2010 at 5:11 am
I have been posting my poems in here and have not had one comment or maybe I still have not found out if my settings are marked correctly. I would love to know more about this and appreciate any help to this newbie here. Happy Thanksgiving to all.
magics02
December 6th, 2010 at 6:05 pm
To help you get more views and traffic, start by reading this: http://en.support.wordpress.com/getting-more-views-and-traffic/
November 25th, 2010 at 5:30 am
haha, no more secret admirers with this latest discovery………..
November 25th, 2010 at 7:09 am
I like this
November 25th, 2010 at 8:53 am
I like the feature, how nice to have a bunch of lovely faces/ people like a post(s) I hope to have some, someday
Thank you wordpress.
November 25th, 2010 at 11:18 am
are you planning on adding a centralized turn-on or turn-off option for this “like post”? just so i don’t have to disable it every single time. one central function would be appreciated. i don’t fancy it too much.
December 6th, 2010 at 6:03 pm
The global setting for like is Settings->Sharing. There you can turn likes off for all your posts.
November 25th, 2010 at 11:21 am
I’ve only just joined WordPress.com (still filling in info before inviting friends) and already I am massively impressed. This just impresses me more!
November 25th, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Brilliant! It took me ages to find who was subscribing to my blog (found the tab now) so having an email is brill.
November 25th, 2010 at 2:41 pm
Hi. Its really good. Thank you for your good idea
November 25th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
That is really great! I had been wondering about the “Likes”. Though rather than an email notifications, it would be awesome to have the “Likes” added as a tab to the Stats “General” box with the subscriptions, shares and spam. That way there is a running tab of all of the “Likes” over time and not just one at a time.
I appreciate all of the amazing stats features that you have added over the last few months. Keep up the great work! Happy Thanksgiving!
November 25th, 2010 at 3:45 pm
What if I don’t like the person who states that they like me? There’s a dilema…
November 25th, 2010 at 4:00 pm
great…….
November 25th, 2010 at 4:25 pm
Nice
November 25th, 2010 at 5:19 pm
Flott
Bra jobba!
November 25th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
good
November 25th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
Hi Scott,
As a new wordpress contributor, I appreciate your work here, and the time you took to read my first post/poem (Only White Horses Can Reach Beyond The Stars…). I look forward to exploring the site further. OWH
November 25th, 2010 at 6:18 pm
My apologies, Scott, I misunderstood the email I received – but perhaps you will read my first post / poem sometime, just the same! OWH
November 25th, 2010 at 7:40 pm
yeah i like that
November 25th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
I like this idea as long as it’s a daily digest. I don’t have any subscribers yet, but when I do, I don’t want to be bombarded with a while bunch of emails. It would be so much better if this were included in the stats page.
November 25th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
Good idea. It’s nice to communicate and know we are being heard!
November 26th, 2010 at 1:15 am
I’m new at blogging. And I don’t thibnk my blog is out there in it’s proper place.
November 26th, 2010 at 3:03 am
An excellent feature! It should certainly help fellow WordPressians and readers alike.
November 26th, 2010 at 4:42 am
The LIKE button is tied to Facebook. I get to know who liked my post and Facebook gets to know as well. AND Facebook gets to know where the person who clicked on the Like is on the web. Sorry but i consider it as insidious as a tracking cookie.
November 26th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
The like button is not tied to Facebook.
November 26th, 2010 at 5:27 am
thanks for this!
November 26th, 2010 at 5:46 am
This happened to me, too…didn’t even know I had 5 subscribers until I got one of these emails yesterday. Thanks!
November 26th, 2010 at 6:27 am
Great innovation! WordPress is really the best, until further notice. Keep on the good job.
November 26th, 2010 at 9:31 am
Excellent idea:)
November 26th, 2010 at 10:46 am
very nice and long needed one. Thanks
November 26th, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Ooooh, thankies (:
November 26th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Thanks, very usefull to me
November 26th, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Nice! And, ditto s.donuts!
November 26th, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Thanks for this great feature !! WordPress rocks!!
November 26th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Great feature. However I am still stumped as to why no one is actually finding my blog..wish I knew what I was doing wrong.. :-S
November 26th, 2010 at 7:22 pm
Hi everbody new to this site just wanted to say hello and have a great weekend.tc phill
November 26th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
nice addition especially since im new here
November 26th, 2010 at 11:15 pm
Thanks! And we all want to be liked! Right guys?
November 26th, 2010 at 11:23 pm
Not many people seem to like every day happening around them but these are the kind of things I blog about,sorry if I am distasteful in my blogging.
November 27th, 2010 at 12:53 am
This is exactly what we expected. Thanks !!
November 27th, 2010 at 1:37 am
I think it would be nice to have a button for people to like posts through facebook. That might help to dray views to your blog.
November 27th, 2010 at 6:35 am
I’m really glad to see both of these. But especially the notification of subscribers. I’ve been thinking for awhile that would be a nice feature. Thanks!!!
November 27th, 2010 at 6:57 am
Thanks a lot..Nice
November 27th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Hi people i am new here =D i shall start posting soon. Please support me!!!
November 27th, 2010 at 10:46 am
I like this