Diaspora/Website

Following

You are sharing with a person who is not sharing with you. This means that you have added them to one (or more) of your aspects, but they have not added you to their aspects.

The person you are following will have access to posts you have made to the aspect(s) you have placed them in as well as your public posts, and you will start receiving their public posts in your stream.

Mutual sharing

If two of you have started sharing with each other, things get more interesting, and more complicated! This can be compared to being “friends” on Facebook, although there are important differences.

When there’s a mutual connection, the two of you have each indicated a desire to see posts from the other, so each of you will see limited posts made by the other person to the aspect(s) into which the other has placed you. However, your sharing with each other might be very different. Think of the following scenario:

You consider Jill a slight acquaintance, and put her in your “Acquaintances” aspect.

Jill, however, thinks of you one of her best friends, and puts you in her “Close friends” aspect.

You post most things only to your “Friends” or “Family” aspects, so Jill doesn’t see many of your posts.

Because you’re in Jill’s “Close friends” aspect, on the other hand, you see almost everything she posts.

The main thing to remember is that <strong>no one</strong> will ever see a post unless you have made it public or have made it to an aspect into which you have manually placed that person.

Finding people

In order to start sharing with people, you will have to start following some people. Perhaps they will follow you back! Let’s look at how to do that now.

There are several ways to find someone and add them to an aspect.

Search

The search field is in the header bar. To add someone by search:

Type a name or diaspora* ID. Suggestions will appear as you start typing.

Hit enter to search, and you will land on a page with results.

When you have found the person you are looking for, click the <span class="click">Add contact</span> button.

If the person you want to start sharing with appears in the list of suggestions, just select their name to get to their profile page and click the <span class="click">Add contact</span> button from there.