Local and non-local messages are organized in “timelines”.
Messages are collected (in real-time) into sets called timelines:
- Your “home” column is curated just for you. It includes messages you send and those of users that you follow.
- The “local timeline” contains all public messages from other RCsocial.net users. They are often (although not necessarily) related to our interest area (Catholicism).
- The “federated timeline” is the biggest one. It includes not only the messages in our local timeline, but also messages from users of other sites who are followed by any user of RCsocial.net.
- Your “notifications” column contains direct (private, only to you) messages and system notices. These can be configured to your preferences.
Don’t sweat remembering all this. It is easier than it sounds and you will get the hang of it quite quickly.
Follow others of interest.
People you know or who have content that interests you can be “followed” so that their messages will appear in your “home” column. You may follow people on RCsocial.net or on any other instance worldwide.
When you follow people on other instances, their public messages are also added to the RCsocial.net federated timeline. Thus, the federated timeline may become something of a fire hose, merging public messages from more and more users – both local users and those we follow worldwide.
As you get to using RCsocial.net, you will follow more and more people. Other users will follow you. Sometimes you will see a message from someone you follow that you would like to share with folks who follow you. That is easily accomplished by “boosting” it (click the circular arrows below the message). For those who have used Twitter, it is called re-tweeting there.
BTW, you have the option of marking messages as “favorite”. That sends the originator a notification that you liked their message and also adds it to your own “favorites” list for future reference.