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!
- November 20, 2006
- Community, Dashboard, New Features, WordPress.com
Nifty, folks! I’m diggin’ the keyboard shortcuts especially.
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cool!!
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Great feature! WordPress is really developing into something even bigger and better real fast these days. Woho! My needs are pleased.
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Neat! Now I just have to get friends! 😛
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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?
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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!
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really neat feature. thank you. I’ve tried it out with two names and it’s working just fine.
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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)
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Interesting…
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This is a great idea and will make it easier to keep up with WordPress friends. Thanks!
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I’ve just seen this pretty new feature.
Really cool, thank you 🙂
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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.
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ahh, this is really handy. 😀
life made easier. ^^
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Wow a community and networking option..pretty cool… What next…:)
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Great Feature again!!!
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Was this needed? If people do not know how to bookmark or add to their blogroll,how useful is this really?
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I would be great if you could integrate some kind of search with this, I love it, but it’s not intuitive.
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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.
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Ahah WordPress-spy finally!
j/k will give it a whirl though
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Now that is a good add on!
Thanks guys.
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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?
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That is great ❗ Thanks 🙂
I love you ppl 😀
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wow 😀 even new stuff on my birthday hehehe
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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).
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This a great new tool, thanks wordpress!
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does this mean that i can now monitor the moves of all my “friends”?
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This is a good feature! thank you very much!
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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!
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Interesting, Thanks!
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Thar’s a nice idea. A different way to check out what’s going on with the users you like. I like a lot.
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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
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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.
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Ace! Love this feature. ^^
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So thats why the wordpress team was silent throughout this month.
Great work Donncha.
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I’ll give it a try.
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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.
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!!
great function.
it’s help to connect the wp citizen.
thanks.
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Nice!
This keeps me from having to surf an ungodly amount of pages just to see who’s written what. Nice job, again
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Neato! Thanks for the great little tool. WordPress does it again!
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Nice one.. I love it.
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This seems another exciting feature!!
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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!
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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!
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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 !
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Will immediately check this out!
First post! LOL!
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Wow! A great surfing experince!
You guys at Wp rock!
Thanks thanks..
Best Smile,
Zeezat
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greet, does it just work for blog at wordpress.com?
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Enemies? *Gulp* This should be interesting.
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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!
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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.
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Niceeee:)
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I also wish I could delete, I just added the wrong Robert Scoble.
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Thanks! Nice idea!!!I must try it….it’s a lot that we didn’t read wordpress news!!
Astasia
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Thanks for the service. I love the dashboard.
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Cool feature, can keep track of all my enem… ahem friends posts
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yay! this is great!! 😉 cant wait to try it out.
it would be cool if we could also see who added us as friends.
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I have to find one~ now
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Well done. A nice addition
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🙂 e vai
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Cool feature… WP rocks!!!! \m/
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Unuseful. You better add favion changing feature.
I know, that you’re still developing it, but release it 😀 !
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Really nice idea 😉
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What an interesting idea and a gud `un too!! 🙂
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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? 😀
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Brilliant! Lets me keep track of everyone’s page from the comfort of one page.
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i’m so glad i gave up my hosting plan and decided to move here.
things get better all the time, thanks.
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awesome since rss doesn’t work for me all the time.
-BRian
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Thanks, guys, that feature is very useful for me! =)
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to cool
thanks a lot 😉
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The ‘j’ and ‘k’ surfing is kinda cool 🙂
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great, this one looks nifty indeed.
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Excelent!
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its nice to see constant improvements. im glad i found you wordpress.
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great feature!
thanks bro!!
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Nice improvement, excellent work…
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This really sounds good 🙂
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Sounds good to me. Will check it out.
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I’m new and still developing my page, I can check that sooner i’m sure.Good Job WordPress
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