Yesterday I was implementing #Mastodon API in #AndStatus. Comparing AndStatus with #Tusky client at some point I noticed that Tusky shows me a new post, which mentions myself. But I couldn't find the same post in any timeline that AndStatus feeds from the Mastodon server.
It appeared that in addition to Twitter/GNU Social-like timelines Mastodon has something conceptually similar to an "Activity stream" that is called "Notifications" here and, as other parts of the API, is "hand made" :-)
Actually, this is a good sign, showing that ideas of #ActivityStreams (currently represented by the #ActivityPub standard https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/ ) are growing in the heads of the Mastodon developers. I would go one step further and formulate all timelines and actions as activities and activity streams...
It's interesting that these ideas are growing in _my_ head also :-) - I decided that internal AndStatus model of notifications will be based on ActivityStreams too. I.e. each individual notification will have an Actor, an Action and an Object/Content e.g. "Peter posted 'I met a friend'". Having notifications in such a structure, we will be able to show them to a User in any needed form: in the Android Notification bar or as a timeline.
Currently AndStatus shows mostly "mentions" only in its "Mentions" timeline...