The Member Directory is a collection of all public users within your community. This is a collective view of everyone not just your connections.
The difference between connecting and following with a user is this; following a user you are simply putting their updates on your feed and being made aware of their actions within the community. Connecting with a user allows you to now tag them and interact directly with that user within the community. A connection request needs to be approved whereas a follow request does not.
While in the Member Directory, you will see a heart icon to the right of the follow/unfollow button. By selecting the Favorite heart this user is now on your Favorites Bar. The user you have favorited is not made aware of this action. When you Favorite a user it allows you to easily access their profile from the Favorites Bar at all times.
While in the Member Directory, you should be able to filter users to find someone specifically related to a topic/category. This is when the profile categories come into play. You’re able to select a tag cloud (profile category) which then will filter out all profiles that don’t have that tag associated with their profile.
The Member Directory is a resource to view all public users in the community. However, if you want to view your personal connections you can do that as well by going to My Connections.
The online menu on the right-hand side will show you all users online with public profiles. The green circle to the right of the users’ name indicates that you are connected to that user. The yellow circle to the right of the users’ name indicated that you have a pending connection request with that user. If there is not a green or yellow circle, no connection request has been sent between yourself and that user.
