Following a person is the only follow on UNI that brings you anything. Follow someone and you are told when they publish, and their new work is gathered into a daily email. Following a journal, a publication, an organization or a topic adds you to that thing's follower count and does nothing else. Following a project tells you when that one project is published, and no more.
The rule: follow people for a feed, and save the individual piece for everything else.
What each follow gives you
- A person. You get a notification when they publish a journal, a publication or a discussion, and a daily email gathering new work from everyone you follow along with anyone new who followed you. That email is controlled by Product Updates & Features in your notification settings.
- A project. You get a notification each time a new version of it is published, not only the first time. A project that is revised often will notify you more than once.
- A journal, a publication, an organization, a discussion or a topic. The follower count goes up by one and the button changes state. Nothing is sent to you when new work appears.
There is no timeline anywhere on UNI that is filtered by what you follow. Inspirations, search and the discussions feed show the same thing to everyone.
Following is public, one-way and immediate
Nobody approves a follow, and no reciprocal follow is created. The person, author or organization owner is told that you followed them, as a notification rather than an email. Topics are the exception: following a topic tells nobody.
Two side effects are worth knowing. Following someone, if they follow you back, unlocks direct messages between you at no cost. And joining an organization follows it automatically, so an organization's follower count includes its own members.
There is no list of who you follow
UNI shows follower and following counts on a profile, but there is no page that lists the accounts behind those numbers, in either direction. Topics are no exception: the card in the journal sidebar suggests topics you are not following yet, so a topic disappears from it once you follow it.
Competitions are saved, not followed
A competition has no follow. What looks like one is a bookmark, and bookmarking a competition puts you on its reminder list. See Competition email reminders.
Topics behave differently, and the button is broken in two places
Following a topic is a bookmark on the topic rather than a filter on UNI, and the Follow button currently fails on a topic's own page and on the topic browser. What following a topic actually does covers where it does work and what to do instead.