I did some digging into what "following" means in this software. There is an option to have a personalized news feed under the what's new section. It includes posts by those people you've followed. It obviously doesn't seem to be enabled at the moment.You sure?
I ask because all of my "friends" from the old site are now followers and I haven't gotten any alerts that they have posted.
Also, I started following MBRO earlier just to see what happened. He's been posting and I haven't gotten any alerts.