Back in January 2009, @Micah (Micah Baldwin, who is currently with Lijit) sent out a tweet proposing "Follow Friday".
In an article on Mashable.com ("#FollowFriday: The Anatomy of a Twitter Trend", Baldwin said:
The idea is to think of interesting people you already follow and recommend them to others
The idea was laudable — but what is the reality? Fridays on Twitter quickly became — and continue to be – a cacophony of #FollowFriday tweets full of Twitter handles and often little else. (Just do a simple Twitter search on the hashtag, #FollowFriday.)
Baldwin also crowed about the concept going "international" and said:
FollowFriday is a strong example of a crowdsourced recommendation engine
Is it really crowdsourced recommendations? Is #FollowFriday really encouraging conversation?
Not anymore. #FollowFriday has simply created a society of global social media lemmings: People posting shopping lists of Twitter handles and others willing to follow those listed simply because a third individual told them to (usually not why). Anything of value gets lost in the mob scene on Fridays. (Which is also why I'm posting this on a Tuesday.)
More importantly, I think recommendations ought to be made with the recipient's needs in mind. Just because you may find someone interesting does not mean I will. I don't have the time to be clicking through to the Twitter profiles of all these #FollowFriday tweets to find out if the people you list match my interests or needs or humor, etc.
This doesn't produce good "karma". It's not conversation. It's simply wasted space and time.
What do I think is the most powerful Twitter recommendation of all? A simple retweet.
When someone's retweet is of value to me, I often investigate the original Twitterer. Sometimes I follow them, sometimes not. If I do, it's because I have determined that what they have to offer may be of value to me.
(I refer you to Robert Scoble's interesting "You are SO Unfollowed" posting.)
It would be interesting — but I suppose impossible — to get some actual statistical analysis on the efficacy of #FollowFriday tweet versus a retweet. I can tell you from my own experience that I have rarely received a follower because of inclusion in a #FollowFriday tweet — but I have often received a new follower because of someone retweeting something I shared.
Meanwhile, I not only decline to participate in #FollowFriday, I've found a way to block that hashtag in some of my Twitter applications. What a relief.
Now I can concentrate on people and information that are truly valuable to me.
You?
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Lots of food for thought here, Ruth. I agree that tweets with lists of people to follow without reason are both frustrating and useless. I tend to pay little attention to those. But I believe there can be real value in listing one or two follow suggestions AND a brief pitch as to why. Micah went on to advocate this shortly after the FF phenomenon took off.
The success or failure of the entire Twitter experience hinges on finding the “right” mix of people to follow. “Right” for each user that is. Like RTs, I feel a thoughtful Follow Friday tweet can help connect others in a positive way. I have made many valuable connections via a trusted followers' recommendations. Likewise, I have stopped following certain people who spend all day Friday tweeting lists of names.
Sadly, I think it was inevitable that the concept of Follow Fridays would get watered down or misunderstood as it spread. Much like Twitter suggesting we answer the question “what are you doing?” spawned millions of tweets about what people were having for lunch. Jeremiah Owyang suggested “what are you passionate about?” would be a more realistic jumping off point for Twitter. Perhaps Follow Fridays should be reframed to answer the question “who are you passionate about and why should I care?” In any event, I think it continues to be an interesting experiment and look forward to the next “movement” like it.
In general, I skim over #followfriday tweets, but if they've got some context to them, they can be useful. For example, @pennyschouten tweeted today:
Intl ed peeps -#followfriday resources: @UKVisainUSA , @BorenAwards , @EducationUK , @usembassylondon , @dipnote (US State Dept)
I checked it out because she'd prefaced it by telling me WHO might have these interests in common with her and when the username wasn't obvious, by describing who it was. Just like when she did a True Blood-themed #followfriday a few weeks ago, and I knew I could skim over it, because they would be tweeps I wouldn't be interested in following. (Sorry, Penny!)
You can't expect your followers to have ALL the same interests as you, so it helps if you can direct people toward the information they might be interested in, rather than just suggesting that they click blindly on things.
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