As I get my friends on board here, I feel it would be really neat to have things that my irl friends share show up at the top of my feed and be highlighted. I'm really liking this site, and the social interaction it encorages, and would love for that to carry over to conversations I have in life. It would eliminate the need for my friends to send me things separately, or in a private message to ensure I see them.
It could function either as a second tier of people I follow, or more simply just a check box or star next to their name.
This is incredibly hacky and requires a separate feed but might work for you. I have a couple of accounts I used to use to follow certain topics or domains or users that I really wanted to make sure I kept up with. This was during a time where I followed a large amount of people but didn't have a ton of time for Hubski and didn't want to miss anything. I set up an account, followed those people or tags or domains, and then bookmarked the URL to that feed (ie: https://hubski.com/feed?id=insomniasexx) Then I could view that feed while still interacting normally on Hubski as me. No logging in and out or anything is required.
Do you know if there is a way to go to a hubski address that includes multiple users in the url? (ie: https://hubski.com/user?id=insomniasexx+fckgwrhqq2yxrkt) Then I would be able to create a bookmark and simply add users to it as needed.
I don't believe we have that functionality - I know you can separate pub id# for posts and comments to create lists. I'll add it to the list of things to talk about on the monday night calls.
One problem I see with this is that it could be used to turn hubski into a hivemind-like place for you. I personally come to this site to see different insights and opinions; most people would abuse this feature by "starring" those people whom they agree with.
..just like they would 'ignore' the people they don't agree with. My Hubski is diverse, and I follow most major players in the community as well as casual, on-and-off users. That's how I like it. fcg here may not, and if he wants to stay in a cozy bubble of a couple common interests, that's okay by me cause it doesnt hurt me in any way; we're all hubskiing with individual perspectives and contributing differently here, so we couldn't hivemind this place even if we tried. In other words, each of us is that guy who lived with a pack of wild bears and filmed it. We can set up camp and chill with everyone, catch some fish and watch how things go down. But once you get cocky and forget this isn't your land, you'll be a cold little hill of grizzly turd before you knew what hit ya.
I do want to avoid the bubble that my last aggregator ended up putting me in, but agree with you that it should really be up to the individual user. Perhaps highlighting the posts my "starred" friends post in my feed, without changing the order would solve this. It would prevent my feed from being dominated by just a few users, but would still allow me to easily pick out the content shared by people I already know and trust the opinions of.