In spring of 2009 Micah Baldwin started a twitter Meme that would never die. It’s called #FollowFriday.
The idea behind #FollowFriday is that you (the twitter user) would take one fascinating person you follow on twitter, and explain to the rest of your followers why they should follow them.
I embraced Follow Friday for most of 2009. I loved sharing great finds with my community.
Unfortunately 2010 was the year that I didn’t use Twitter on Fridays, mostly Friday mornings. I would go to twitter and my entire stream would be flooded with tweets like this
I see absolutely no value in 140 characters with a bunch of names and no explanation. I follow almost 5,000 people on twitter, and each and every one of them is worth following and interacting with.
Tomorrow morning, and every Friday moving forward I will be logging onto twitter, but instead of reading the live feed (as I typically do), I’ll be looking at my short list of people who have promised to not #FollowFriday.
The list is here, it’s short, but at least you will be able to navigate twitter.
If you won’t be participating in #FollowFriday please leave your twitter id below in the comments and I’ll add you to the list.
If you will beĀ participatingĀ in #FollowFriday I’d love for you to recommend just one person (maybe two) and give a reason for following them. It’s possible that people will actually pay attention. Just not me, I’m using lists to filter the noise out.
Nothing is worse than when all the people listed in the highly annoying, no-value #FF tweet RT the whole list again. I am all for meaningful #FF when you feel like it, but put some thought into it at least.
It surprises me that people still do #FollowFriday. Honestly, I can’t remember the last time I did it. And on the rare occasion that someone actually recommends me for #FollowFriday, I never get any new followers.
Take a look @mllyssa ‘s history. I just connected with her last night and it looks like she’s actually been responding to people for the past day or so. However, most of her previous tweets have just been long lists of #FollowFriday. She’s been able to “game” the system as many people will just blindly go along with her #FF recommendations and simply retweet themselves. In this manner, she’s been able to build up quite a large following and @Klout score because a lot of people simply like to see themselves as a #FF and will retweet it.
When you look at the content; there’s not always that much real engagement, but she’s been able to hit numbers in terms of followers, responses and retweets. I thought it was rather interesting how she’s been able to build an *apparent* level of influence with this profile.
Personally, I do agree though. The #FollowFriday game just becomes spam and I’ve often called people out for RT’ing a #FollowFriday when they’re not even following me themselves. Without a reason why, #FollowFridays have just become spam.
If I ever post a #FF, then yes, I’ll normally give a reason why or at least show good sentiment about this Twitter ID.
I’m following your list then and would love to be added through: @iloveGarick
*there’s also the alternative though.. I’m not sure if you’ve seen #SwallowFriday for the pervy pervys.
I do not follow Friday. I did it once as a thank you to someone who did me a HUGE favor. But I hate it. Then the RT of a list you are on make me angry.
I am @3princessmama
I’ve never done #FF-seems like a clique-ish thing.
I haven’t done FollowFriday in ages for pretty much the same reasons as you. I thank people if they FollowFriday me but I don’t retweet it. Instead, I randomly tweet people that I appreciate – but not usually on a Friday. Just when I feel like sharing some love.
Follow Friday has actually netted all sorts of followers for me, but I agree with what you say. It defeats the purpose to just throw out names without reasons why people should follow.
When I 1st joined Twitter, I used Follow Friday to look for those worth following. Sometimes it worked. And as I followed few it wasn’t my entire feed on Fridays.
In the last few months it has become retreats of huge lists. Ugh. Or people recommending the same people every week. Which seems clique-ish. (Is that a word?)
Now I might FF someone with a reason, but I would rather do that on another day so someone might actually give the person I mention a chance. Why bother when it’s a sea of junk?
I totally agree. Even worse is when you’re included in a list from a person that you don’t interact with on the site or when that person doesn’t even follow you (got one of those yesterday).
Gini Dietrich at Spinsucks.com has been doing #FF a bit differently. She does an entire post about the person she’s suggesting. Except for today, but she admitted to cheating it where she listed the people she’s been recommending since she started doing it this way in March.
Thanks for explaining what #ff was. I just started tweeting like a week ago. And maybe it was yesterday I saw a bunch of posts about follow friday and had no idea what people were talking about.
If you have any other tips or insight for new tweeters and bloggers, I would love to hear it.
I liked Micah’s initial suggestion. I had no idea it would morph into what it is today or I would’ve driven up to Boulder & beat him with a stick until he took it down.
I have participated in (read: listed) #FF 5 times. The first one (before it became List-o-matic) 2 times where the people I was putting on the list really impacted me, and 2 more that were out of a sense of guilt (these people keep FFing me all the time!)
I just told some very nice folks tonight that if I did do FF, they’d be on mine.
Yeah, tricksy like that.