Remember the OLD ACTIVITY BOARD......your CHOICE to see self activity or friends activity.....well I miss the OLD....and yes I KNOW ADAPTING TO CHANGE IN THE LONG RUN IS GOOD.....it is MY ADJUSTING time....getting the NEW WAY OF IN AND OUT OR SHARING AND CARING OF BLOGGING AND ALL THE GOOD NEW CHANGING OF THIS NEW SITE......yet for ME....and I am ONLY TALKING ABOUT ME..... I like seeing my friends pic on MY PERSONAL PAGE......I like SEEING what you did ......which blog you commented on.....where you were at ....JUST LETTING IT BE KNOW.....some OLD is good....to ME!!!! in Jesus name I am ADAPTING TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY TO THIS NEW CHANGE AND THANKS FOR LETTING ME START A DISCUSSION......
Community
You can just look in the activity feed and see who posted very recently. They're "online" even if there is not indicator as such. Even if someone is replying by email and not necessarily logged onto the site they're still online in a way. Also the site is a lot more responsive in way of notifying you so people can get back to each other quickly without having to constantly check on the site.
Creating a New Stream for My EX Feed might help get you the view you want. Check it out. Plus now you can do Status Updates which are very similar to Message Boards. You can @mention your friends and they can reply. Overall the new community is much more social than the previous community. Yes, you're used to how things were in the old community and we've tried to replicate as many similarities as possible however we're using a pre-built platform and adjusting the options to best fit the community's needs. Unfortunately you can't just make happen whatever you would dream up. That would be awesome if it were possible but there is always a downside to that. Platforms that have nearly unlimited configuration options often have a lot of bugs and rarely get updated.
In many cases, the solution you're looking for is probably here. It's just a bit different than before. If you're following your friends then you can see their activity by going to My EX Feed and then Click on the "Following" link.
Mark
EX Community Manager