Firstly, don't expect any action on this for months.
That said, I'm thinking of making an interesting addition to YWS. On the old YWS, you had the newsfeed which told you when your YWS friends made a new blog entry or posted a new work. I plan on adding that again, but making a big change to it.
What I want to do is have a newsfeed, but make it more like Friendfeed. For those who are unfamiliar with it, it's a cross between Facebook and Twitter. It's like Facebook in that you can post stuff such as links and status updates. It's like Twitter in that you have followers instead of friends.
I think changing the YWS system to have followers instead of friends makes a lot of sense. For one, you'd be able to follow your favorite YWS writers and be notified whenever they post something new. For another, it opens up the potential to have people on YWS who specialize in certain things. As an example, think of how on Twitter you have people like FakeAPStylebook and S***MyDadSays. Stuff like that doesn't work well in a friend system. it does work well in a follower system.
To break it all down, this is what I'm proposing:
1. You don't friend people, you follow them. When you follow someone, they may follow you back but they don't necessarily have to.
2. A YWS newsfeed where you can post status updates, links to stuff on YWS, and bulletins.
