What happened to sending someone a friends request, I don't get the people you follow and people that follow you thing.
No it's not the same, before you would send someone a friends request and they would iva accept you as a friend or ignore. Your current people you follow is all your friends from the old format. When you look at your profile page you can see people that follow you, which is your old friends + others who are now following you, no notification of new people following you. What I am getting at is you can no longer send a friends request, you just click on follow that member on there profile, I think you should have the choice as to who you want to be friends with.
that's correct. you can follow others, others can follow you. but i have gotten notifications when new people follow me. they show up under the lightning bolt alert button in top right.