"X is now following blog post" in the Activity stream

[Jelena]

When I follow a blog post, I'm getting an item in the Activity stream (not a notification, thankfully) whenever someone else also starts to follow it. Why would anyone care for this information? I'm not a blog author and there could be 100 people following it.

This seems unnecessary. Otherwise I don't understand what's the value of having this item in [already unmanageable] activity stream.

Edit: to clarify, in this case X is not someone I follow, it's some random person I don't even know.

[jerryjanda]

What, you don't want to know who is as cool as you are?

Let me ask around on my side, as I'm not sure of the rationale (or whether there are plans to change).

--Jerry

[BJarkowski]

Hello Jerry,

I think there is more events in the Activity Stream that would require analysis. I'm pretty sure I would get the same notification if I follow a tag under which the blog is posted. That makes the Activity Stream very difficult to use.

[Former Member]

I would want to see this if "X" is somebody I follow - "Jelena2 is now following blog post...". But being told about people I don't know who follow the same things I do makes a whole lot less sense. I tend not to follow individual blog posts, though, so I'd not noticed this happening. Not that I use the Activity Stream very often either, because it is way too noisy...

[Steffi_Warnecke]

Shouldn't the info "Look, this person is following this!" get you interested in the content? That's how I see this info at least.

So why show this about something I already follow myself? It the same with "X person is now following Y person", if I already follow Y myself. Not really useful to know. Buuut if I don't follow Y myself and I really care about X's opinion, I might follow suit.

[Jelena]

That would make much more sense as you might want to follow it too (similar to "X liked it" - I might read it and might like it as well). But this "someone did exact same thing as you" note is just useless.

[jcgood25]

Since I am following a handful of tags, I rarely follow a specific item (question/blog), unless it is in some remote corner of the community and I think that by some random act of fortune I will get adequately informed of activities happening within the discussion at the bottom (like the follow button will someday allow me to willingly clone the OP's notifications).

After seeing your post I did some digging and noticed that within my Activity stream/river I am seeing likes, follows, up votes, or more or less any social activity on all blogs and questions for tags I am following, so a secondary tag of 'SAP Fiori launchpad' brings me the news that 'x' is now following this question. Since no comments or answers exists, I get zero value from this information other than if it was a person I was following or knew personally, I might combine that knowledge with curiosity amplified by the title of the object and be inclined to take a look. I know that Sajid posted a training document on how this is designed...

I fully agree with you on the excessive noise and consumption of vertical space this takes. The only real option I've found is to exclude 'Social Activities' by selecting 'one' of the other Activity Type filter options, and by doing so you suppress all of the other activities. My wish list item for having this 'Social Activities' filter be a multi-select object is still pending. I would prefer to simply exclude the social activities, and see only authoring related stuff (new/comments/answers), but that would currently require you to toggle between blogs and q&a (assuming profile updates are largely insignificant).

[Jelena]

I edited the question to clarify that in this case X was some random person whom I don't follow or know of. If it was something like, for example, "Jeremy Good followed this blog" then it'd at least make some sense because I know who Jeremy is and I'd consider if I should read the blog since Jeremy found it of value. However, even in this case, if I'm already following the same blog that would be merely, as Jerry "Jenius" Janda, noted - "Jeremy is as cool as you" type of information. And I already know it anyway because all people I'm following are cool. 🙂

I've also been waiting for reduced visibility of social activities but it's been more than a year already and nothing really changed.

[jcgood25]

Thanks for the clarification edits - I was worried my answer would be reported to moderation and converted to a comment, so that's why I offered a solution in bold 🙂

By any chance, is the mystery 'X' person following you?

[JL23]

Not an excuse, just a fact: it was as well shown in Jive. Just much different: as a summary, utilizing about 10 events in the same size of a single event today. And if you really saw it depended anyway whether you used the activity stream or the communications stream.

[Jelena]

Posted a comment on Jeremy's answer - to clarify, X here is not a person I follow. I read the criteria on the Jive page and this item doesn't really fit any of them. I'd expect to see this if (a) I was following X or (b) X made a comment on the blog (or updated it if they're OP). Neither is the case here. There is too much noise already to get pinged about insignificant activities of random SCN members.