Help > Friends
Adding friends is easy. If you already have the profile link for someone you'd like to friend, just navigate to their profile, then click "add as a friend" beneath the "about me" section.
If you want to find friends on Goodreads and you don't have profile links, just click on the friends icon in the header, which is located directly to the left of your profile image. Then select the "add friends" tab.
On this page you have several options to add friends:
- your Gmail, Facebook, or Twitter contacts
- clicking on Friends of friends
- browsing friends
To remove a friend, click on the friends icon in the header (the icon directly to the left of your profile image) then the "edit friends" button. Click the X next to the name you wish to remove. The friend will not be notified. You can also navigate to the friends profile, scroll down to the bottom, and click "remove as friend".
To block a user:
1) Navigate to that user's profile page.
2) Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
3) Click "block this member".
A "story" on Goodreads indicates how two friends met. Unfortunately, it isn't a creative writing project.
For example, if you wanted to record that you know your friend Sam from work, you would click "write a story" on his profile page, and then select "colleague."
We have a friend limit of 5000, the same limit that Facebook currently has in place. This is because our system doesn't handle accounts with over 5000 friends very well. Please note that you can have an unlimited amount of fans and followers.
A friend relationship is two-way. You see their reviews, and they see yours. A following relationship is one-way. You see their reviews, but they don't see yours in their feed. That said, members you are following can view your profile if they choose to. There are separate counts for friends and followers. You are included in each other's friend counts, but only one-way followers are included in your follow counts.
You can either be following someone or be their friend, not both. (There is one exception: authors who have a blog and/or are members of the Goodreads Author program.) In either case, you will see their reviews on your homepage when you have the appropriate filter settings.
An easy way to exclude certain people from your feeds is to make a "top friends" list. This way, you can put all the people whose updates you would like to see in one place, separate from the people whose updates don't interest you. Then you can edit your feed to only display the updates from your "top friends".
To do this:
1) Click on the "Friends" icon in the header (the icon closest to your profile pic).
2) Click "edit friends" on the top of the page
3) Select the checkboxes of the people whose updates you would like to see as "top friends"
4) Go back to the home page.
5) Directly underneath the "updates" tab, there is an option that says, "showing: friend and people I'm following". Click the arrow to the right to display the list of settings.
6) Select the radio button for "top friends" underneath the "From People" column on the right.
7) Click the "apply filters" button.
You can also prevent friends from showing up in your friend update emails by filtering your update emails as "top friends only" here.
Our "top friends" feature allows you to choose a select group of friends whose updates you want to see first. To start using top friends, click on the "friends" tab and then click the "edit friends" button. Use the check-boxes to choose your top friends. Then navigate to the home page and click the “top friends” toggle at the top. Your profile page will also show your top friends first. You can also change your email settings by selecting "edit profile" from the drop-down list to the right of your profile pic in the header, and then selecting the “emails” tab. Select "only top friends" next to "send me new reviews from my friends." Don't worry - your friends won't know if they are a top friend or not.
We've recently instituted a friend limit of 5000, the same limit that Facebook currently has in place. This is because our system doesn't handle accounts with over 5000 friends very well.
Please note that you can have an unlimited amount of fans and followers.
