Writing and reading your blog and keeping an eye on the blogs of your friends is great but what about the rest of WordPress.com? If you’re signed in to the site take a quick look at the top right hand corner of your browser. See that “Next Blog »” link? That link is the key to travel here. Clicking it will bring you to a random blog on the site! Give chance a chance.
You can also drag that link to your browser’s toolbar where it will always be available. If you’re not logged in, drag the following link to your toolbar to experience all the fun of random blog travel! Next Blog »
Random is the new order. 😉 (Apologies to Apple.)
WordPress.com News 
I’ve been looking forward to this feature.
Thank you!
yes that is very cool! thank you
funny.
i clicked and go a chinese(or japanese) and a russian blog.
i couldn’t read. but the third one is english.
Ah so that’s why the entire site was down. Nice new feature.
Excellent! That will work just the way I like to browse, randomly.
Nice lil touch …. cool.
Any plans to make a filter so that you can only see blogs in your language?
WordPress Rocks!!
Atariboy
cool feature 🙂
I’m not really a fan of this feature.. It’s kinda lame and I thought proffesional systems like WP wouldn’t put this in.. Sorry but I am no hyprocrite. *Disappointed*. Anyways, it would be nice if you could give the admins the choice to disable this.
Thanks for the awaited feature.
Now WordPress.com users can have more interaction within the community!
Cool stuff, thanks.
lmao, ipod shuffle, glad i didn’t buy it
thanks for the feature
thanks donncha
Great! Ive been looking forward to this for a while 😀
Thanks / Diolch
Awesome!
Chrono Cr@cker – you’re in the minority it seems. Most people like it.
If you’ve unchecked the “Search Engines” option on the General Options page your blog won’t be included in the “Next Blog” list.
Donncha you mean most people that like it have posted a comment on it.
Blissfully living without it, thank anyway.
[rts:~] ryan$ curl -I http://wordpress.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
X-totalblogs: 95351
X-rootblog: http://wordpress.com/
X-created-on: 2005-07-20 07:45:16
X-Pingback: http://wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php
Content-type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Server: LiteSpeed
Date: Thu, 09 Feb 2006 07:59:01 GMT
Connection: close
I love that little easter egg!
X-totalblogs: 95351
Too cool.
I’m agree with Atariboy, language\country filter will be most useful and helps people to make their communities! 🙂
This is really cool guys..
Keep it up!
Great, I love reading blogs 😉 Thanks many tonnes 😉
I won’t use it, but at least gives the people a chance to see other blogs.
Though it’s useless if it doesn’t look for the same language that it’s specified in our blog (*hint, hint*).
ehehehehehe, as what i’ve asked in forum 😀 thx thx
How about a link called “Previous Blog” as well? 😉
And I agree with Atari Boy, an option to see blogs only in the user’s selected language will be cool!!
cool idea, what about a searchable directory ?
Good idea, I like random!
Thanx guys
Please don’t put this feature somewhere the non-logged in public will have access to it…that’s one of the reasons why I dumped Blogger.
Kevin – it’s sort of public. If people read this post then they can add the “Next Blog” link to their toolbar. Otherwise they won’t see it at all.
Or, if you uncheck the “Search Engines” checkbox in the options page your blog won’t be included in the “Next Blog” search.
Great idea. Not knowing what you are going to hit is the fun part.
Nice.
@Amit: Actually, the back button to go to the previous blog works just fine.
for a searchable directory, I think you man to search in wordpress.com blogs. If that is the case google is ur friend
Query site:*.wordpress.com , just google and voila. Hope that is what was meant by linickx
And Donncha, I think that you guys need to pay some attention to the load of empty blogs out there, there are a lot of them on wordpress.com, created either for the Akismet key or to just block the username. Whether you guys keep those blogs or delete them, its your decision entirely, but they shouldn’t be appearing when someone clicks the “Next Blog” link, right?
This is just perfect! This will give the not-so-popular blog a chance to become…well, a little bit more popular 😉
Thanks!
Great work.
I like it. I’m seeing things I wouldn’t see otherwise, in two different ways:
1. I click the “next blog” link and find something interesting.
2. When I look at my stats, I usually click any referrers I don’t recognize. I’ve found a couple of interesting blogs that way … apparently someone was looking at them and then clicked “next blog” and landed on me.
I don’t know why anybody would have a problem with it. I know some people like to get all secretive about their blogs. I don’t understand that. If I don’t want anybody to read my comments, I don’t post them on a blog that is readily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection.
Anyway, I think this is a fun feature. Thanks for adding it — and thanks for offering such a great service.
I think the button is mis-labelled… I like the ‘view a random blog’ idea, but the word ‘next’ indictates that I should be viewing the next item in a list… so maybe you should call it ‘Random Blog’ or ‘Bingo Blog’? 😉
Oh! Dear Donncha, guess I am in the minority. 😦 And do you think I would be crazy to disable Search Engine pinging, my blog hits would reduce like hell. Seems like Kevin is with me.
Ummm…This makes it stupid for proffesional bloggers who can’t afford hosting and a domain. Would be really nice if you guys give us a “Disable Next Blog” Checkbox… An ardent devotee of wordpress requests this… Let’s see if I can gather some supporters.
Cheers!
I like it too. How else will people find unknown blogs?
Wait a minute, how stupid can I be? I just realized that this next blog link is available only on the WP Toolbar on the top and not at the main blog itself. Now, it makes this seem cool enough for me… Please do take back all my previous comments, I really am a loser. Sorry Donncha!
Chrono – glad you like it now! 🙂
I’ve no problem with the Next/Random Blog link on the toolbar for logged in users. I just don’t want it there for everyone else to see.
My perspective is from an educational setting…I train teachers to set up blogs using WordPress.com since it’s great. So if students visit their teacher’s blog for announcements or to post comments/assignments it’s best not to have the next blog link there. It’s an invitation to go exploring which, from a teacher’s point of view, is undesirable.
Kevin, yep. That’s why we only show the admin bar to blog admins. 🙂
Wonderful. I’ve been waiting for this feature. Best way to discover new blogs on WordPress.
The travel through WP is awesome! I could discover a great blog! Cheers!
Finally.
Someone above mentioned using site:*.wordpress.com to search for blogs.
Notice the theme of all those blogs that appear in the first couple page of google?
This is really cool but could you add a feauture where we could filter out diffrent languages? there is no point to be redirected to a spanish blog if i can’t read spanish
This really got me. Cool
I have to say on balance that I see more negative than positive in this random ‘next blog’ feature…it just invites comment spam and may be more trouble than it is worth for people blogging here.
If you’re going to have this ‘next blog’ link, why not make it show up in the language in which the current blog being viewed is and default to only going to blogs in that language (sorry I can’t read Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Cyrillic, the Greek Alphabet, etc) and include a ‘view next blog in any language’ option in a WP.com registered user’s settings
Besides I can find other blogs just by searching at Google Dogpile or Technorati
Why not let us customize our headers already – now *THAT* would be a useful feature which people have been asking for for weeks now.
I do have one suggestion though, it would be nice if in the referal page it actually shows which user visited my blog not only http://wordpress.com/next/ hope it can be done
I am so sorry to notice that wordpress.com was blocked by the Great Fire Wall of China.In my mind,there are thounds of users of WordPress in China and wordpress.com is the most wonderful BSP.We many Chinese users love wordpress.com.However,we can NOT have an access to wordpress.com in normal way.The gorvenment of China has blocked the whole access to wordpress.com.We love wordpress.com but we can NOT enjoy it freely.
Why?What’s going on?To safeguard our nation?To make us dumb? we asked.
Certainly no answer.
It remind me of the same thing which happens at google.com.
When some bloggers in China find that blogsome was blocked one year ago,everybody think they guys must get creazy.It came that blogspot.com being blocked,weblogs.com being blocked,BBC.co.uk being blocked……that’s why when wordpress.com was blocked,everybody thought it was NOT worthy of a fuss.The sun shines on and your life is continuing just without half an hour accessing to your blog at wordpress.com.
I’ve got a new blog @ http://my.donews.com/patriotlml
OK,face the music and do NOT claim freedom.
It seems that the randomizer for my ‘next’ link mostly picks a language I can’t read 😦
Seems like a very nice feature. I’m new to blogging and just figuring it out. It didn’t take long to figure out WordPress.com has a very functional and intuitive set up, compared to my first blog blob that is. It will be fun to do “random.”
Dennis
I love the ‘ramdom next’ feature. What I can’t understand, is if you don’t like it, don’t use it. As for keeping your blog ‘secret’. If you put stuff there that you don’t want the WORLD to see………..why are you putting it in the INTERNET? Hey guys, this sin’t a place for deep dark secrets! Think about it.
If I land on a blog in another language, i just hit the next button again, and again. Same way I hit the next button again when I land on a blog that is of NO interest to me.
I think its cool, and I’m glad to have it.
WordPress.com’s “Next Blog” feature…
Interesting new feature that’s was introduced by WordPress.com’s blog is the Next Blog feature! Similar to the Blogger next blog button on the top corner!
I think this is a great feature, as it gives you a chance to read blogs you wouldn…
I realized that the “Next” button is not included if you are a blog reader (instead of the blog author). I wonder how it would be possible for other readers to enjoy this feature?