Seeing What’s New with Your Friends, Family, Co‑Workers, and Other Contacts

In addition to functioning as a super‑powered address book, the People app also provides a What’s new feed that aggregates content from Facebook, Twitter, and other accounts. It’s a one‑stop shop where you can find out what’s going on with your friends, family, and other contacts, no matter where they’re posting information. The What’s new view is shown in Figure 8‑13.

What’s new provides a decidedly Metro‑y take on this sort of information, with each post segregated into a tile‑like space. Scrolling occurs horizontally–that is, left to right–and not vertically, as with document‑based applications. And while the app will refresh this view periodically, you can refresh it yourself by enabling the app bar and clicking the Refresh button.

One of the neatest things you can do, of course, is interact with your contacts by leaving comments and other feedback to their posts. What you can do varies from account type to account type. For example, you can also choose to “like” a Facebook post, mark a Twitter “tweet” as a favorite, or “retweet” something you see on Twitter. To do any of this, find a post you like and click it. It will display full screen, as in Figure 8‑14, providing a more complete view that includes others’ comments as well as whatever actions are available.

Figure 8‑13: The What’s new view provides a way to easily keep up with your friends and other contacts’ activities.

Figure 8‑14: A contact’s post shown in all its full‑screen glory

Then, tap the Add a comment box on the bottom to add a comment. You can optionally click a Like, Favorite, or Retweet button if available, again depending on the account to which the post was made.