Generating and providing a content feed to a user that surfaces information items that are determined to be interesting or relevant to the user including content that is determined to be “distant” to the user is provided. Explicit user actions are used to discover peers who are not colleagues of the user (e.g., peers with whom the user does not share a close organizational relationship, peers with whom the user does not regularly communicate, etc.), but who the user indicates an interest in via his/her actions. These peers are categorized as elevated peers of the user, and information items associated with and trending around the elevated peers are surfaced to the user in a content feed.