Socializing BiggerPockets: Followers, Following, Feeds, and Apologies

First . . . my apologies

It seems that when we pushed out the changes that I'll be covering below, we also flushed out our mail queue.  It appears that over the course of the past month and a half, some notification messages didn't get sent out.  The system decided to send out duplicate notifications for these messages all at once as we forced all these emails out.  Many of you got several duplicate messages from BiggerPockets.  I just want to profusely apologize for the inconvenience it may have caused to you.  We believe we've fixed the problem, and do not anticipate this happening again.

Enough of that . . . on to the Cool Updates! 

New to BiggerPockets -- Followers

As social media has progressed the use of followers on the major social sites has taken hold. We saw a need to add the ability to have one way "followerships" in addition to having "mutual colleagues," as members told us about their desire to keep tabs on others without needing to be actual "colleagues."  We thought this was a great idea!  

Here are a list of the changes that have come to the site as a result:

- As I already mentioned, in addition to colleagues, users can now simply follow other users and can be followed as well.

- If you don't want someone to follow you, you can block them by selecting the red icon in your followers page.

- Followers can see all your public "actions" in their "Activity Feed" (was friend feed) in the dashboard, including things like blog posts, property listings, articles, comments, press releases, groups you've joined, bulletins you've posted on, and so on.

- When you follow someone, you can also elect to send them a "colleague request" with a private message in the follower request.  These "new requests" messages are now viewable in your colleague request page in the dashboard.

- If you follow someone and they follow you back, regardless of whether you send the actual "colleague request," you will become mutual colleagues.  Colleagues will not show up as followers or people you're following, but will appear in your colleague tally.

- Followers, following, and colleagues now show on the left side of the dashboard.  You can also see these in the Networking dropdown in the grey toolbar in the dashboard.

- You can now see someone's followers or who they are following, in addition to their colleagues on their profile.  (you can still block this through your privacy options)

- We've set limits on the number of people you can follow.

- The people listed on your followers and following pages are listed in chronological order, with the most recent at the top of the first page.  Your newest followers and those people you follow will appear first.

Some Other Cool Upgrades 

- The forum feed in the dashboard now shows posts from groups that you're a member of.  This should keep users better informed of action in the groups they are a part of, and should serve to awaken these groups a bit!

- Additionally, the forum feed in the dashboard now has a "more" link at the bottom of it that allows you to see more than just one page of new posts.  You can see a histoy of recent posts from the past day and beyond if you desire.

Finally

I'll be adding some images to this post to help illustrate everything . . . I just wanted to get it out so everyone could get an idea of what's new!  Check back soon.

Feel free to leave any questions or comments below.