Diaspora/Website

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.

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.

A drop-down menu will then appear under the button in which you can select which aspect(s) to add the person to. You can also create a new aspect and add them to that aspect by clicking <span class="click"><em>+ Add an aspect</em></span>.

Once you select one or more aspects, the aspect button will turn green and you will instantly start sharing posts to those aspects with the person while at the same time you will start following their public posts.

Another way to follow a friend is by sending them an invitation mail. This can be done through the <span class="click">by mail </span> link in the menu on the right of the search results page or from the <span class="click">Invite your friends</span> link in the sidebar of the stream page. As soon as your friend accepts the invite, they will be taken through the same registration process you have just been through.

From their profile

Another way to add a person to one of your aspects is by clicking their name wherever you see it in diaspora*. This will take you to their profile page, from where you will be able to add them to aspects using the button in the top right corner of the page.

Alternatively, just hover over their name or profile photo in the stream, and a small “hover-card” will appear. You can add them to an aspect directly from this hover-card.

The above three options focus on connecting to people you already know. But sometimes strangers can be just as interesting, if not more interesting, than people you already know. A great way to start connecting with people is to start following some #tags of subjects that interest you. Posts containing those tags will then appear in your stream, and you can follow people who post things which you find interesting, by placing them into one of your aspects.

To remove someone from your contacts completely and thereby stop sharing with them, all you need to do is to remove them from all aspects you have placed them in. You can do this by:

either going to their profile page or hovering your cursor over their name in the stream and waiting for a hovercard to appear;

clicking the arrow on the green aspect selector button and deselect all the aspects ticked.