I was finally able to implement “follow user” feature, that was long requested for in the user forum and by individual users. I believe this will bring a new level of interaction on the website and I am looking for your feedback on this. One of the effects I observed in the few days that  it was alive is that the latest favorites list on homepage is spiced up already. This is very important, since I was working on bringing more dynamics to the website to reveal to buried sketches and users on the website. This is what OpenProcessing had been suffering for a while: When you upload a sketch, it gets displayed on the homepage for a very short time unless it becomes a top favorited sketch (because of the amount of uploads increased dramatically in the past years). And if a sketch becomes a top favorite sketch on the homepage, it is very likely to stay there for a long time since it is very hard for a sketch to get to that list.

Following users enables their sketches to be seen by more people and being displayed around the site more. Once more follows exist on the site, this feature will have a follow up to provide you more relevant sketch recommendations for you to check out. You can start following users now by clicking on “follow” button on their portfolio!

In addition to “follow users” thing, you are also now greeted with a new dashboard. Kind of a twitter feed/facebook feed mash up, displaying new sketches from your follows, your new followers, comments on your sketches and collections, etc.. Hoping to increase the queries that are displayed on your activity feed in the following weeks.

I hope you enjoy these new features and please let me know if you have any ideas or feedback.