New alerts will automatically appear in your control bar; if you want to look at old alerts, you can visit this page, or click Show all… in the alert dropdown.
Alerts are our notification system. You receive alerts by default for various actions, but they’re rather self-explanatory—they let you know what’s going on! They are similar to Facebook’s notification system—when someone interacts with you, or something needs to be brought to your attention, you’ll get an alert.