Today, however, Boxee has released an update to their website that includes a friend finder that should truly transform the service into the social entertainment discovery engine that it was destined to become. With the new release, you can now find your existing social network and email contacts on Google, Twitter, Yahoo, Windows Live, and FriendFeed.
To start following your friends already using Boxee (you'll probably be surprised by the quantity of them) all you need to do is click on the Friends tab and select Find. From there you can grant access to your Google, Yahoo, and Windows Live accounts, or add your login credentials for Twitter and FriendFeed. You'll then get a comprehensive list of Boxee users that you can easily click to follow.
For most applications, an automatic friend finder is blasé news. For Boxee, a friend finder is incredibly important as it adds the much needed contextual social layer to the app to help us find and discover the entertainment that our friends are enjoying. Boxee is just one of those apps that really comes alive when you can find great content, and being able to follow your friends entertainment behaviors is key to making that happen.
You'll also notice that Boxee's web interface has been refreshed to make your online experience much more user-friendly. What was once clunky and difficult to use is now simple and intuitive.