Social
The social feed is where collectors share finds, follow each other and talk about retro tech. It's a profile-based feed of posts with images, item tags and hashtags, plus follows, friends, profiles and the Connections hub.
The feed
The feed has three tabs:
- For You: a public feed of posts from across the community. Anyone can read it, signed in or not.
- Following: posts from the collectors you follow. Needs an account.
- Friends: posts from your friends only. Needs an account.
Logged-out visitors can browse For You, open public profiles and hashtag pages, and search. Anything that changes data (liking, commenting, following, posting) prompts you to sign in first. If a guest opens a link to the Following or Friends tab, the feed falls back to For You; no error is shown.
On mobile, Social is one of the five tabs in the bottom bar, alongside Collection, Marketplace, Add and You.
Posting
Posting is available on every plan, including free Hobbyist. No tier buys extra social capability.
A post can carry:
- up to 10 images
- a caption of up to 2,200 characters
- item tags: up to 10 items from your collection
- hashtags
- a content warning, which hides the post behind a tap-to-reveal cover with a short note explaining why
To write one:
- Open Social and start a new post.
- Add your caption, then attach up to 10 images if you want to.
- Tag any items from your collection so people can see exactly what you're showing.
- Add hashtags to group your post with others on the same topic.
- Add a content warning if it's needed, then publish.
Who sees a post
Each post carries its own visibility, set when you publish it:
- Public: visible to anyone, including logged-out visitors.
- Followers: visible to collectors whose follow you have accepted.
- Private: visible only to you.
Post visibility works alongside your profile settings below. Where the two disagree, the narrower one wins.
Likes, comments, share, report and block
Like any post, or add a comment. Both appear under the post in the feed. You can share a post, report one that breaks the rules, and block a collector to stop seeing them and hide your posts from them.
Hashtags
Hashtags you add become links. Tapping one opens its hashtag page, which collects every post using that tag from across the community.
Following collectors
Follow other collectors to bring their posts into your Following feed. Following is free on every plan.
What happens when you follow depends on the other collector's profile visibility. If their profile is public, the follow takes effect straight away. Otherwise your follow is held as a pending request until they approve it, and you see nothing extra in the meantime.
Visibility and privacy
Three separate settings decide who can see what. They do different jobs.
Profile visibility controls who gets the full view of your profile:
- Public: anyone gets the full profile.
- Friends or Private: only collectors whose follow you have accepted get the full profile. Everyone else signed in sees a limited version.
Collection visibility is a separate setting with the same three choices, controlling your collection specifically. Setting your profile to public does not automatically publish your collection, and vice versa.
Web discoverability is the master switch for logged-out visitors and search engines. When it is off, your profile, posts and collection do not appear to anyone who is not signed in, whatever your other settings say. Signed-in members are unaffected by it and are still governed by the two settings above.
:::info Which way it defaults Web discoverability is on by default for new accounts. Accounts that existed before the setting was introduced were switched off by default, so it is opt-in for them. If you have had your account a while and want to be findable publicly, go and check the setting. :::
Two smaller controls sit alongside these. Your real name is hidden on your public profile by default. Only your @username shows until you turn it on. Your email and phone number are hidden by default too.
Blocking overrides all of it in both directions: a blocked collector sees nothing of yours, and you see nothing of theirs.
Profiles and showcase
Every collector has a profile with a cover banner, a pinned grails shelf for their standout pieces, and their follower and following counts. Below that, a set of Showcase tabs organises what they've chosen to show:
- Posts: their feed activity.
- Collection: items they've made public.
- For Sale: their live marketplace listings.
- Wishlist: what they're hunting for.
- Lists: curated groupings they've built.
- Trophies: badges and achievements from the Engagement Hub.
The For Sale, Wishlist and Lists tabs only appear on profiles you have full access to, and each of those surfaces applies the owner's own visibility settings on top.
The Connections hub
Connections (at /friends) brings your whole social graph into one place, split across four tabs:
- Following: collectors you follow.
- Followers: collectors who follow you.
- Friends: mutual connections you have both agreed to.
- Requests: pending follow and friend requests, in and out.
Following and friends are both free on every plan.
Friends are a separate relationship from follows. You send a friend request, and it stands until the other collector accepts or declines. You can send one by picking a collector from search or discovery, or by entering their email address or username directly.
Want-it wishlist
Keep a Want-it wishlist of items you're after from the Library. When a matching item appears, for sale or new to the catalogue, you get an alert. As a guest, adding to your wishlist prompts you to sign in first.
:::tip Tune what reaches you Follows, likes, comments and Want-it alerts can each go to push, email or the Inbox. Set how you hear about them on the Notifications page. :::
Related
To message a collector about something they are selling, see Messaging. To list an item you've shown off, head to Selling.