Adding search to the Forum is on our to-do list, so please don't worry about duplicating someone else's post - we don't expect you to wade through all the posts in the Forum to see if someone else has already asked the question.
Though I did post on the EYB Blog about Friends and other features we have temporarily suspended. We didn't have time to complete every new feature when we launched the new version of EYB last week. Friends was one feature we decided to suspend as we plan to launch a much better social networking feature soon. We have retained all the Friends data so when we launch the new networking, you will be reconnected with your friends.