The activity stream is great for discovery
I’m a big user of Twitter (@steverumsby), and so when the new SCN was unveiled and it had an activity stream much like Twitter I was immediately drawn to it, and almost all of my use of SCN is via the Activity stream. I follow people (80 of them right now) and places (26 currently) and so see everything posted by or in them. It is a good way to make sure you see all (well, most) of the new stuff that appears here that you’re interested in.
There’s another advantage too, though. When people you follow like, rate, or comment on content, that information appears in your activity stream, even if the original content is in a space or by a person you don’t follow. When people you follow follow new people, that appears in your activity stream. In other words you see not just the stuff that interests you but also the stuff that interests people you follow. This is a great way of discovering new people and interesting content you wouldn’t have otherwise found.
One of the new missions in SCN is to follow a few people, so if you haven’t done that yet, do it now and give the Activity stream a try. See what you can discover!
Steve,
Thanks for pointing this out. I admit, I follow quite a few people but never actually went to the Activity Stream, as I mostly just hit the Browse button.
One more thing to try!
Sue
I agree but you may want to limit the number/amount you follow. The activity stream can get cluttered quickly 😉
That's very true. You don't want so much in there that you miss the good stuff. There's definitely a sweetspot. I think I've got scope for a little more yet, but I won't be following anywhere near as many people here as I do on Twitter. The signal to noise ratio is a lot better here 🙂
And you can post new status updates from their too.
Did you know you can hide stuff from your activity stream? When looking at your followed activities, you can hover over entries and select to hide that particular content or a whole category (e.g. discussions or all content from the specic space).
That's a good point. There are lots of things that appear when you hover. If you hover over the avatar or name of the person that posted the activity you can follow or unfollow from the pop-up you get. Similarly, if you hover over the name of the space the content was posted in you can follow or unfollow the space. This pop-up also shows you some more recent content posted in the same space.
Good read. Thanks for a new pointer in SCN.