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Ideally, I would like to be able to add people as friends (with their approval). So that when they ask a question, I get a notification.

How is this useful?
I have to exchange e-mails with co-workers about C++ questions. And often I need to make a post on SO and send them a link. It would be more user-friendly to just add friends and avoid e-mails.

The only disadvantage of it that I see is that users will boost their friends' ratings faster than average, which makes it unfair. The advantage for the community is that more users will use SO.

One hack (or short term solution) would be to create a tag with the name of a group and all members will rss to that tag.

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  • 2
    Please use proper capitalization. – Bart Sep 20 '12 at 14:58
  • 1
    Perhaps you should ask C++ questions on facebook. – Aaron Bertrand Sep 20 '12 at 14:59
  • No. Stack Overflow is not a social network. Period. End of story. End of debate. – user164207 Sep 20 '12 at 15:00
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    1. Hopefully not going to happen. 2. Why would you need somebody's approval to get notifications of their posts? 3. There's already a user feed link on every user's profile you can use. – Dennis Sep 20 '12 at 15:03
  • Please don't create that tag either. It would almost certainly be a "meta tag" which is not an appropriate use of the tagging system. – Flexo Sep 20 '12 at 15:03
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    Absolutely wrong for Stack Overflow. This site is not here to let you ask questions of your "friends". You post a question, and the community, the whole community, gets an equal chance to provide an answer. Nothing resembling this feature will ever be added to Stack Overflow. The entire concept of "friends" is antithetical to the stated goals of this site. – meagar Sep 20 '12 at 15:13
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    You could check StackEye - Chrome Extension to follow users and questions on StackExchange sites and other posts linked there. – Martin May 5 at 19:40
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Repeat after me , Stack Overflow is not social networking site.

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  • 17
    Stack Overflow is not social networking site. – ale Sep 20 '12 at 14:56
  • SO is a Q&A site. i'm talking about a feature for notification system not a social grouping site. in addition, it's pretty hard to make a social grouping site and even if SO tried, it wouldn't be able to do that. look at g+ and facebook, and i'm not even considering others – kirill_igum Sep 20 '12 at 15:01
  • @kirill_igum, if they can create Q&A site, they can create Social Networking site too, I am sure all S.O. user would like to join it, the reason for not including such feature is let it be Q&A site, and make the the best one :) – Lucifer Sep 20 '12 at 15:03
  • @Lucifer i wasn't talking about coding, I was talking about users using it that way. – kirill_igum Sep 20 '12 at 15:11
  • SO already has this feature. you can get rss feeds from users. so i was taking about making it more user-friendly. there is clearly demand for that. so it's a mater of time till someone makes some kind of wrapper – kirill_igum Sep 20 '12 at 15:12
  • I have to exchange e-mails with co-workers about C++ questions. And often I need to make a post on SO and send them a link. It would be more user-friendly to just add friends and avoid e-mails. for such the case you can use chat room for faster live technical conversion, this feature is already there. – Lucifer Sep 20 '12 at 15:13

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