Sony Mobile rozpoczęło współpracę z liniami LOT przystępując do globalnego programu dla często podróżujących pasażerów Miles & More.
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Are you curious to see how your friends are using WordPress? Give the new and improved Friend Finder a try to connect with your Twitter, Facebook, and Google contacts who have WordPress sites!
After authorizing WordPress.com to use your Twitter, Facebook, or Google account to find your friends (don’t worry — none of this account information is saved!) you’ll see a list of people you know who have WordPress sites.
Click Follow and each time your friend publishes a new post it will show up in your Reader under Blogs I Follow.
If you have multiple blogs, make sure to set the Primary Blog in your Settings so the correct blog is shown to friends when they find you.
If you’re interested in finding more cool blogs to follow, browse our collection of Recommended Blogs and try adding some topics to follow in your reader using the box in the bottom left.
In our quest to help you find the perfect look for your blog, we’ve added two brand new themes to our collection!
First up is Everyday, a beautifully designed premium theme by James Goode.
Everyday has been precisely calibrated to be pleasurably readable on almost any screen. Attention and care has especially been given to provide a robust and versatile layout to suit your writing needs. From short quips to lengthier bits of prose, Everyday will rise to the challenge and shine with every post you publish. Read more about it in the Theme Showcase or take it for a test spin in the demo site.
Next is a wonderful free theme named Origin by Galin Simeonov.
Origin is a light, elegant theme with a minimalist look and feel, perfect for a blog or journal. Your photos are the focus thanks to featured images and stylized Sticky posts, and the responsive design makes it a great fit for mobile devices and small screen sizes. A full list of features is available in the Theme Showcase and a demo site has been set up so that you can see it in action.
Back in 2010 we introduced the exciting new ability to Like the individual posts you’ve read all around WordPress.com. It’s been one of our most popular features since then, as evidenced by the chart below that goes up-and-to-the-right as an indication of great success and achievement.
Likes per week since the beginning
Today I’m happy to announce a few enhancements to the way Likes work that we think you’ll really like. 
Show Likes on Pages
In the past, we’ve always restricted Likes to individual blog posts. Given the success of Likes, we want to make it as easy as possible for everyone to Like what they are reading, wherever they are reading it. Likes now share the same display settings as your sharing buttons (which you can change from Settings -> Sharing in your dashboard). In addition to showing Likes on single posts, you can now show Likes on all of your site’s content:
Here’s an example of Likes displayed on a blog’s front page:
Do you like naps and puppies? I think I do!
Show Likes on Gallery Images
In addition to making Liking posts easier, we wanted everyone to be able to Like all of the things you publish on your blog, including media. So, we’ve also added the ability to Like photos directly from inside image galleries, like this:
Who can resist liking Paul the Puppy?
What You’ve Liked
Now that it’s super easy to Like everything you see, you need a place to see what you’ve Liked. To make this as convenient as possible, we’ve added a link in the Reader that lists all of the posts you’ve liked across all of WordPress.com. You also have instant access to your favorite posts through the official mobile WordPress apps for all your favorite mobile gadgets.
We think these tweaks really improve the Liking experience, and we hope that you enjoy them!
Did you think I was going to say “like” again? :)
This Sunday, April 22nd will mark the 42nd observance of Earth Day. According to Earth Day Network, “More than 1 billion people now participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.”
To inspire you to get in on this year’s celebration, here are eight amazing nature-related blogs on WordPress.com:
Birdlightwind.com
70degreeswest-explore.com
Leahyetter.WordPress.com
Drawandshoot.me
Beingmark.com
Beetlesinthebush.WordPress.com
Theblondecoyote.com
Lookingatthewest.com
So, how will you celebrate Earth Day 2012? Maybe Picnic for the Planet, or plant a tree? Whatever you do, be sure to share it on your blog! And don’t forget to tag your post with Earth Day to make it easier for others to find.
For more cool nature blogs, check out our collection of Recommended Blogs, and add topics like Nature and Earth Day to follow in your Reader.
We’re happy to announce three new things that you can embed into your site!
Spotify
Embed music from Spotify by right-clicking any song, album, or artist in Spotify and selecting “Copy HTTP Link” or “Copy Spotify URI”:
Then paste that into your post editor, making sure that it’s located on its own line all by itself. You’ll end up with something like this when you view your post:
Rdio
If you’re an Rdio user, you can embed music from them too. Copy the URL from your address bar when looking at a track, artist, or playlist and paste that into your post editor. Here are a few examples:
If you use the Mac application for Rdio you can copy URLs from there as well. If you click the “Share” button you’ll see a URL to copy right at the top. Paste that in to your post editor and you’re all set.
GitHub’s Gist
We’re big fans of the code repository website GitHub here at Automattic and many of us use their Gist code snippets website. While we already have a cool way to embed code into your site, we realize many of you want to post Gist-hosted snippets too so starting today you can. Again, just copy/paste the URL out of your address bar onto its own line in the post editor.
This is a guest post by Kristina Chang, Evan Moore, Tony Xu, and Omer Rabin; students at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
“What makes a blog popular? What drives page views?” These are the questions that we’ve been trying to answer over the last few weeks. We were on a mission to dig into the data and analyze the strongest parameters that influence the flow of visitors to WordPress.com blogs.
Out of the 30+ million blogs on WordPress.com, we randomly selected a sample of almost 100,000 blogs to perform a regression analysis. Here are our findings, together with a few recommendations. We hope that this provides some new information, and kudos to you in case you’ve already incorporated these tips into your blog – the data suggests that you’re on the right track. Keep it up!
Make your blog easy to follow – It almost sounds obvious, but the simplest way to build more awareness is to make it easier to do so. Make sure that you have the follow widget as visible as possible. If your readers receive a notification every time you post, or see your post in their reader, there is a much higher chance that they will revisit your blog.
Comments, Comments, Comments – The most successful blogs, we found, created and encouraged a dialogue with their readers. The best way to make people more engaged with your writing is for you to engage back and start a conversation. In your posts, encourage people to comment. Also, make sure that you reply to people’s comments and continue the dialogue. This back and forth conversation is a significant driver of page views; holding all else equal, every additional comment can potentially drive up to 18 incremental page views! You can start by simply asking follow-up questions at the end of each post: ”have you ever done X?”; “do you think Y is acceptable?”. You can read some more thoughts on how to build your audience and how to get more comments.
Post Frequently and Regularly – Your readers want to know that you are there for them and that you are “on it”. If you post frequently and regularly and have enabled the follow feature as we mentioned above, checking your blog could become a daily routine for your readers. Even if it’s a short post, write something new as frequently as possible, and at regular intervals. (The Daily Post can help with ideas, as can the advice on how to get more traffic)
While these three tips were shown to be the most important drivers of page views in our analysis, you might consider other parameters, which we found as having a partially significant effect: syndicating your post to Twitter and Facebook (using Publicize), for example, could lead to additional page views.
Happy blogging!
We are happy to announce our new REST Application Programming Interface (API) that lets developers explore, interact, and create great new content with the vast community of sites on the WordPress.com network and, in the near future, Jetpack-enabled sites.
The API gives developers access to posts and comments, as well as the ability to Follow, Like, or Reblog content for users. Other features from WordPress.com, like the daily handpicked content on Freshly Pressed, are also available through the API.
An excellent example of an application that uses the new API is the Windows 8 WordPress.com app, available now.
Our goal with the new API is to simplify the experience of using and adding to the data available on WordPress.com. To do this, we now use the OAuth2 protocol to authenticate requests for data. To retrieve public data, you can make unauthenticated requests. To perform actions, such as making new posts or comments, you would need to make authenticated requests. When the API returns data, we now return a standardized JSON object for ease-of-use.
The REST API also self-documents itself; as we add new endpoints, the documentation on our Developer Resources blog will auto-update to provide you with the latest information. In addition, you’ll also have access to a Developer Console, which will allow you to run real REST API queries and see real JSON data directly in your web browser. You can read more about the Console here.
Ready to build an app and integrate it with WordPress.com? Great! You can now sign up for and manage your OAuth2 tokens without waiting through an approval cycle. If you have any questions or feedback on the API, please get in touch with us. Make sure to follow the Developer Resources blog for news, updates, and documentation about the REST API and other awesome services we are making available to developers seeking to integrate with WordPress.com.
People blog for different reasons, but many post with hopes of seeing feedback from readers. Here at WordPress.com we’ve studied why some posts and blogs get more comments than others, and want to share our advice with you.
- You need visitors before you’ll get comments. You won’t get comments until people visit your blog. Start by reviewing our famous post on How to Get More Traffic to understand the basics of building an audience. Posting on a regular schedule is an important part of building traffic, which will lead to more comments. You can see our recent research on increasing page views too.
- Have a clear and strong position in your posts. Clarity in writing helps readers form their own opinion to share. A post titled “I’m not sure if I like bananas” is less likely to compel a response than “How I learned to love bananas” or “Why I will never eat a banana again”. Writing well and having interesting thoughts is by far the best way to encourage more comments (and follow The Daily Post for regular advice on writing better). Being provocative, or picking polarizing topics, can help attract comments too, but be careful: the more intentionally provocative you are, the more polarized and uncivil the comments you receive are likely to be.
- Reply to every comment you receive. This rewards people for leaving a comment, and also shows new readers that you care about comments, encouraging them to leave one too. Be a good host: be more polite and forgiving than your visitors. WordPress.com allows you to reply to comments via email, a convenient way to keep conversations moving along.
- Ask your friends. If you are writing about a topic your friends are interested in, send them a link and ask them to comment. If you pick friends with blogs you can offer to return the favor. This ensures every post you make will get at least one comment, provided you’re willing to give one in return.
- Start conversations. In real life, most conversations start by reciprocation. “How is your day going?” “Fine. And you?”. In your post, don’t just offer an opinion. Supplement your point of view with invitations for other people to offer theirs. At minimum, end posts with a question inviting people to answer.
- Customize the comment prompt. The text that appears above the comment area is customizable. It says “Leave a Reply” by default but you can make it say whatever you like. We strongly recommend asking a question like “What do you think?” or “What is your opinion?” as questions are requests for people to respond. Go to Settings-Discussions to make the change.
- Write a response to another blogger’s post on your blog. By excerpting a small paragraph from another blogger’s post, and writing a response on your blog with a link back to their post, you invite them to visit your blog. WordPress.com automatically tries to contact their blog for you, letting them know you have linked to them. If what you say is interesting, they’re likely to comment, or at minimum, respond in a kind with a post on their blog. In both cases you’ll be starting a conversation which leads to more comments.
- Use WordPress.com’s discussion features. We’ve built in lots of goodness to help you start and grow conversations. If you go to Settings->Discussions you can find them all. Make sure you have it set to send you an email when you get a comment, so you can reply quickly. If you don’t get many comments, consider turning comment moderation off so comments appear immediately (if you have it set to email you when a new comment is left, you can always remove questionable comments quickly).
- Run a contest. Create ways to encourage first time commenters. After someone has left a first comment on your blog, it’s psychologically easier for them to leave a second one: they’ve broken the ice. Running a competition where you give a prize away, say a $25 amazon gift certificate, to a randomly chosen comment on a post, can encourage many first time commenters, as well as new readers to your blog
- Create interesting polls. It takes less effort for readers to make a choice in a poll than to write a comment. Use this to your advantage. The more people you get to participate in your polls, the more who will want to return to see the final results and have comments about them. Read about creating polls here.
- Tell relatable stories. A post where you offer a story that your readers can relate to invites participation. For example, if your blog is about baking cakes, and you share a story about how you messed up a recipe with disastrous yet entertaining consequences, it’s easy to ask readers to share their stories of similar disasters.
- Make a post out of the best comments from your readers. If you see a fantastic comment on your blog, create a post where you quote what they said (and link to their blog if they have one). Show your readers that you value and read their contributions, and more people will be motivated to comment in the future.
Also See The Daily Post’s advice on Comment Community, and our previous post on Comment Etiquette.
It wasn’t just a one-time event! The Automattic Worldwide WP 5k is back again in 2012! Set your timers for April 29th!
At Automattic we work from all over the world, and we use internal blogs for socializing and exchanging non-work ideas in addition to making WordPress.com and our other products more awesome. One of the things we’re really concerned about is staying healthy – we even have an entire internal blog dedicated to fitness.
We had a great idea: Get all Automatticians from 79 cities & 24 countries to run/walk a 5k on the same day! This way we can get some exercise together as a company even though we’re apart (though we won’t rule out a softball or Texas scramble at our next meetup).
A year later, and there are now 105 Automatticians we hope will take part in the 5k all around the world in 2012.
We want to invite you to join us, WordPress.com users (and self-hosted WP users, too!), in the Worldwide WP 5k – the 5k blogged around the world! The date is approaching, so read on to find out how to participate.
WHAT IT IS: A 5k run/walk (approximately 3.1 miles). You can run, walk, or skip. It’s up to you. There’s no time limit and there’s just one requirement: that you participate! You can do it inside or outside, on a treadmill or on a track, or even do a swim or a bike ride instead of running/walking – just get moving!
A 5k is roughly equal to:
- 3.1 miles
- 12 laps around a track
- approximately 6000-7500 steps
- approximately 50-60 minutes of brisk walking
If you ran/walked last year’s Worldwide WP 5k, why not try to shave a few minutes off your time and set a personal record (PR)?
WHEN: We’re all busy, but we want you to participate, so we’re giving you some flexibility, too. The WWWP5k is set for Sunday, April 29th, but you can do your run/walk anytime from April 23rd-29th (you’ve got a week to fit it in).
WHO: Anyone who’s ever used or loved WordPress (and your families and friends, too). Heck, the entire Internet is invited!
HOW: Post about it on your site and tag the post “wwwp5k” so we can find you (and for a chance to be Freshly Pressed). If you’re not on WordPress.com, link back to this announcement post so others can find it and participate, too.
You’re welcome to blog your entire route and your preparation (videoblog, perhaps?) but above all we’d love to see where you are and how you’re completing your 5k. Give us a picture of you and what you see when you cross the finish line and tell us your location as you complete your 5k with the rest of the world. Some tools & suggestions:
- Get a pedometer
- Use mapmywalk.com or RunKeeper.com to chart your course
- Set your car’s odometer to 0, leave your house and drive along a safe course with sidewalks for walking/running, until you reach 1.55 miles (you can loop back the same way), or chart out a 3.1 mile course
If you’re not up to running this year, never fear, you can get started with the Couch to 5k method which several Automatticians like – 9 weeks from couch potato to running a 5k, and be ready to run for next year. But make sure to walk this year – no excuses!
Will you be joining us for the Automattic Worldwide WP 5k on April 29th?
