Announcing the Friend Surfer

November 20, 2006

Donncha

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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!

Missing out on the latest WordPress.com developments? Enter your email below to receive future announcements direct to your inbox. An email confirmation will be sent before you will start receiving notifications—please check your spam folder if you don't receive this.

Join 1.6M other subscribers

82 Comments

Comments are closed.

  1. hools Nov 20th at 5:18 pm

    Nifty, folks! I’m diggin’ the keyboard shortcuts especially.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. lukesequeira Nov 20th at 5:33 pm

    cool!!

    Liked by 1 person

  3. flirtydancing 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.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Kevin Guertin Nov 20th at 6:02 pm

    Neat! Now I just have to get friends! 😛

    Liked by 1 person

  5. adam 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?

    Liked by 1 person

  6. journeytomom 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!

    Liked by 1 person

  7. Ujwala 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.

    Liked by 1 person

  8. engtech 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)

    Liked by 1 person

  9. silveira Nov 20th at 6:19 pm

    Interesting…

    Liked by 1 person

  10. icedmocha Nov 20th at 6:21 pm

    This is a great idea and will make it easier to keep up with WordPress friends. Thanks!

    Liked by 1 person

  11. GS Defender Nov 20th at 6:22 pm

    I’ve just seen this pretty new feature.

    Really cool, thank you 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Pingback: Nuova funzionalità di WordPress.com: Friend Surfer « Il blog di GS Defender
  13. donal 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.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. kudou Nov 20th at 6:50 pm

    ahh, this is really handy. 😀
    life made easier. ^^

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Pradeep Nov 20th at 7:00 pm

    Wow a community and networking option..pretty cool… What next…:)

    Liked by 1 person

  16. MadMark Nov 20th at 7:14 pm

    Great Feature again!!!

    Liked by 1 person

  17. axewielderx 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?

    Liked by 1 person

  18. scientaestubique 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.

    Liked by 1 person

  19. Χρήστος Μόρφος 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.

    Liked by 1 person

  20. Rushi Vishavadia Nov 20th at 9:26 pm

    Ahah WordPress-spy finally!

    j/k will give it a whirl though

    Liked by 1 person

  21. livingjourney Nov 20th at 9:33 pm

    Now that is a good add on!

    Thanks guys.

    Liked by 1 person

  22. taraden 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?

    Liked by 1 person

  23. katsarov Nov 20th at 10:00 pm

    That is great ❗ Thanks 🙂
    I love you ppl 😀

    Liked by 1 person

  24. Jano Nov 20th at 10:05 pm

    wow 😀 even new stuff on my birthday hehehe

    Liked by 1 person

  25. biologyfool 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).

    Liked by 1 person

  26. Rami Nasser Nov 20th at 10:31 pm

    This a great new tool, thanks wordpress!

    Liked by 1 person

  27. sockrebel Nov 20th at 10:41 pm

    does this mean that i can now monitor the moves of all my “friends”?

    Liked by 1 person

  28. scrunchyy Nov 20th at 10:45 pm

    This is a good feature! thank you very much!

    Liked by 1 person

  29. sulz 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!

    Liked by 1 person

  30. Yaser Nov 21st at 12:12 am

    Interesting, Thanks!

    Liked by 1 person

  31. Ben 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.

    Liked by 1 person

  32. bonnieq 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

    Liked by 1 person

  33. Alun 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.

    Liked by 1 person

  34. ashan Nov 21st at 12:55 am

    Ace! Love this feature. ^^

    Liked by 1 person

  35. Rakesh Nov 21st at 2:00 am

    So thats why the wordpress team was silent throughout this month.
    Great work Donncha.

    Liked by 1 person

  36. aku Nov 21st at 2:20 am

    I’ll give it a try.

    Liked by 1 person

  37. blaze 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.

    Liked by 1 person

  38. gondolier Nov 21st at 2:47 am

    !!
    great function.
    it’s help to connect the wp citizen.
    thanks.

    Liked by 1 person

  39. Ice9 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

    Liked by 1 person

  40. aspotofblogger Nov 21st at 3:38 am

    Neato! Thanks for the great little tool. WordPress does it again!

    Liked by 1 person

  41. Michael Sync Nov 21st at 4:26 am

    Nice one.. I love it.

    Liked by 1 person

  42. oraclewalkin Nov 21st at 4:41 am

    This seems another exciting feature!!

    Liked by 1 person

  43. The Eternal Wanderer 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!

    Liked by 1 person

  44. Chittaranjan 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!

    Liked by 1 person

  45. Sathya 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 !

    Liked by 1 person

  46. worddrow Nov 21st at 6:25 am

    Will immediately check this out!
    First post! LOL!

    Liked by 1 person

  47. Zeezat Nov 21st at 6:28 am

    Wow! A great surfing experince!

    You guys at Wp rock!

    Thanks thanks..

    Best Smile,
    Zeezat

    Liked by 1 person

  48. Luthfi Nov 21st at 7:06 am

    greet, does it just work for blog at wordpress.com?

    Liked by 1 person

  49. Wengistein Nov 21st at 8:01 am

    Enemies? *Gulp* This should be interesting.

    Liked by 1 person

  50. Helena 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!

    Liked by 1 person

  51. Daijinryuu 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.

    Liked by 1 person

  52. Eowyn Nov 21st at 9:59 am

    Niceeee:)

    Liked by 1 person

  53. scientaestubique Nov 21st at 10:11 am

    I also wish I could delete, I just added the wrong Robert Scoble.

    Liked by 1 person

  54. astasia 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

    Liked by 1 person

  55. theonlineblog Nov 21st at 10:52 am

    Thanks for the service. I love the dashboard.

    Liked by 1 person

  56. blayde Nov 21st at 11:59 am

    Cool feature, can keep track of all my enem… ahem friends posts

    Liked by 1 person

  57. kjenzz 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.

    Liked by 1 person

  58. badpixel Nov 21st at 12:20 pm

    I have to find one~ now

    Liked by 1 person

  59. Pingback: surf your friends in the privacy of your own dashboard « wordpress™ wank
  60. yeolchae Nov 21st at 1:58 pm

    Well done. A nice addition

    Liked by 1 person

  61. gpessia Nov 21st at 2:01 pm

    🙂 e vai

    Liked by 1 person

  62. grinder Nov 21st at 3:04 pm

    Cool feature… WP rocks!!!! \m/

    Liked by 1 person

  63. Livio Nov 21st at 3:54 pm

    Unuseful. You better add favion changing feature.
    I know, that you’re still developing it, but release it 😀 !

    Liked by 1 person

  64. بهمن Nov 21st at 4:08 pm

    Really nice idea 😉

    Liked by 1 person

  65. ceeque Nov 21st at 4:22 pm

    What an interesting idea and a gud `un too!! 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  66. noisedoctor 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? 😀

    Liked by 1 person

  67. Sha Nov 21st at 6:58 pm

    Brilliant! Lets me keep track of everyone’s page from the comfort of one page.

    Liked by 1 person

  68. maique 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.

    Liked by 1 person

  69. Brian Alexander Nov 21st at 11:18 pm

    awesome since rss doesn’t work for me all the time.

    -BRian

    Liked by 1 person

  70. Kichigai-san Nov 22nd at 7:47 am

    Thanks, guys, that feature is very useful for me! =)

    Liked by 1 person

  71. Dennis Pater Nov 22nd at 10:21 pm

    to cool
    thanks a lot 😉

    Liked by 1 person

  72. curlykarl Nov 23rd at 3:45 pm

    The ‘j’ and ‘k’ surfing is kinda cool 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  73. annoxero Nov 23rd at 7:49 pm

    great, this one looks nifty indeed.

    Liked by 1 person

  74. enrike45 Nov 24th at 6:48 pm

    Excelent!

    Liked by 1 person

  75. mermaid632 Nov 25th at 2:36 am

    its nice to see constant improvements. im glad i found you wordpress.

    Liked by 1 person

  76. chaidir Nov 29th at 2:44 pm

    great feature!
    thanks bro!!

    Liked by 1 person

  77. bhooi Nov 30th at 9:26 am

    Nice improvement, excellent work…

    Liked by 1 person

  78. fafe Dec 3rd at 6:26 am

    This really sounds good 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

  79. nightstorm41 Dec 4th at 11:33 pm

    Sounds good to me. Will check it out.

    Liked by 1 person

  80. Evey 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

    Liked by 1 person

  81. Pingback: Apa itu Friend Surfer? « Panduan Tidak Resmi Wordpress.com
  82. Pingback: Nuova funzionalità di WordPress.com: Friend Surfer « Emanuele Cipolla

Create your new blog or website for free

Get Started