How does 'Follow' work?

[Jelena_Perfiljeva]

What exactly will happen if I chose to "follow" someone or something? Will my Inbox get flooded with the emails notifying me of every single activity of the person/thing I'm following?

What will happen if I "unfollow"? I've heard some horror stories from Facebook when people would "friend" someone but then later they don't want to be friends anymore and at the same time they're affraid to "unfriend" because the other person's feelings might get hurt and/or they might go crazy and such.

Maybe this is a silly question, but still... I'm not on Facebook or Twitter (I have a real life ), so please pardon me for ignorance in these concepts.

Thank you.

[Jelena_Perfiljeva · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the replies! I was wondering about the lack of emails in the last few days, but thought it was just me.

Thomas, I followed/unfollowed you, let me know if you received a notification (I know you get one when someone starts following).

I agree this could be a useful feature, but wish there were more filtering/customizing options (e.g. emails for followed activity are only "all or nothing", why can't we get a "digest", like on LinkedIn?). I remember when RSS feeds just got started and it seemed exciting, but I ended up turning off all of them because of so much "noise".

[ThomasZloch · Accepted solution]

Jelena, I did not receive any notification, neither for the "unfollow" nor for the new "follow", maybe they were to close together? Anyway, it seems to confirm that "unfollow" does not send a notification.

Yes, I would also like to have more customizing options. For example, I would like to distinguish between content from followed spaces and followed people. Not sure though how the algorithm behind such a "digest" works, in the end I don't want the machines to take over too much of my thinking

Thomas

[marilyn_pratt · Accepted solution]

Our team is doing so more checking, now that the notification system is working, to see exactly "HOW" it is working and "WHEN" it is working as well as checking that there is documentation in the system about the "how" and "when".

I just turned off my user preferences so that I don't get notifications on "always" for people, places, things.  What I will do is individually mark "email notifications" for specific things I follow (forums, people, spaces).

is on point to update us and can clarify how it "DOES" work shortly.

How it "SHOULD" work is indeed where Idea Place kicks in

[Former Member]

Hi Jelena,

Please let me explain here the options that users have in SCN on following items, spaces or other users. If you follow a lot of activity, you may want to set an email notifications on specific items rather than enabling email notifications for all activity followed by you. To edit email settings, click the arrow next to your name at the top right of the page and then select preferences.

If you choose to be notified by email on "Everything in my Communications Page" you'll receive email notifications about every item that goes into your Communications. Action Alerts and Notifications in the Action page settings notify by email about any Action items. If you mark the Direct Social Actions (@mentions, shares and direct messages) setting you will get a separate email each time someone directly mentions you, when someone shares content with you, or when someone sends you a direct message. People, Places and Content I'm following setting enables you to receive an email notification for all activity from people, places, or content that you are following.

If you don't want to set your general email preferences you can choose to set email notifications on any specific item by clicking on "Receive Email Notifications" under actions menu. You will get notified for certain items such as updates/edits to a specific content. In order to receive email notifications on certain user, go to the User Profile and click on Receive Email Notifications under Actions menu (below the profile picture).

Thanks,

Oxana

[Jelena_Perfiljeva]

Oxana, thank you for a detailed response. It took me a while to figure out where the "actions menu" was (turns out it's not in my profile, but I had to go to the place itself). Can we somehow get a list of all the places/people we're following?

After following Coffee Corner for a few days I have to agree with Thomas that followed activity is not very easy to view as everything gets piled up on the same page - including followed places and specific threads/blogs, etc. where we participated.

[audreystevenson]

Hi Jelena,

You can see all of the spaces you follow by going to Browse > Places and then clicking on "Following" on the left side.

Same thing for all of the people you follow. You can go to Browse > People and select "Following" on the left side.

Audrey

[former_member184701]

Hi Jelena,

If you start to follow someone , he/she will get a notification in 'Actions' box

If you un-follow someone , he/she will not get any notification/message , so that can't be a drama!

Regards,

p.s. ....so do I....I am not in Twitter, Facebook, Odnoklassniki,...........

[ThomasZloch]

I'm following you and have email notifications activated in my preferences, so were it not for the "no emails sent" bug at the moment, I would have received an email with your post above.

I don't think that unfollowing someone sends a notification to that person, I would not worry too much about it. Are you following me? Remove me from the list and I'll tell you if I received any information about it.

I set up a separate email inbox just for the SCN emails, because I am following 15 spaces and 50 people or so...don't try this at home

A quite strong feature in my opinion is the activity stream for followed content. On my wishlist and submitted on Idea Place is a new option "Browse -> Content -> Followed Spaces" as well as "Browse -> Content -> Followed People".

Can you follow?

Thomas