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Follow Friday needs to be revamped

Image via Crunch­Base

Ok, this is where I will prob­a­bly step on many a toe, but really? This needs to be said. (And in case you don’t know me, I don’t have a mean bone in my body…just unfil­tered thoughts.)

Fol­low Fri­day sucks! {…in my opin­ion…}

For those of you who have NO idea what I’m talk­ing about is either a Twitter-newbie or a Twitter-noway. So quickly, I will explain. On Fri­days, users send out Tweets with a list of peo­ple they think their fol­low­ers should fol­low using a hash­tag of either #Fol­lowFri­day or #FF.

That actu­ally sounds like a nice, share-the-love kind of action. And I’m sure that was the intent when this game was cre­ated. How­ever, Twit­ter has turned into a spammers/bad mar­keters delight and in turn using #FF has left a sour taste in my mouth.

There are thou­sands upon thou­sands of peo­ple try­ing to get you to fol­low them so they can fill your Twit­ter stream with crap. Buy this! Click here! Make money this way! It’s like a never end­ing stream of 3am infomercials!

That’s not the Twit­ter I own. My Twit­ter con­nects me to peo­ple who want to engage in con­ver­sa­tion. Some days it’s the ulti­mate think tank with incred­i­ble minds and some days it’s where I go just to bond with other moth­ers who get “it”.

So see­ing Tweets come across my stream with noth­ing but a string of Twit­ter IDs with no other infor­ma­tion does not make me want to go check them out. Why do you want me to fol­low them? What do they mean to you?

The way I fol­low peo­ple on Twit­ter is “lis­ten­ing” in on con­ver­sa­tions. Often through­out the day I check out my favorite peeps from my List and read their stream. If they are hav­ing a great con­ver­sa­tion with some­one, I’ll go to that person’s Twit­ter page and see what they’re about. From there I decide if I will fol­low them or not.

So, if you really want to rec­om­mend some­one to every­one, why not ded­i­cate a sin­gle Tweet to them — about them? I’ve seen sev­eral peo­ple do this, but I so wish we all would.

I would love to hear why you do (or don’t) par­tic­i­pate in the #FF string of IDs. What’s your strat­egy in using #FF?

Tags: Follow Friday, social networking, Twitter

7 Responses to “Follow Friday needs to be revamped”

1. Stacey says:

   January 25, 2010 at 12:02 pm

   So glad you wrote this! I could not agree more! I think I par­tic­i­pated in #Fol­lowFri­day once but, other than that, I tend to ignore most #FF tweets. I’m sure that peo­ple are sug­gest­ing some really great peo­ple and, hope­fully, I’ll con­nect up with those peo­ple even­tu­ally. But, like you, I want to know WHY I should fol­low these peo­ple. WHY are you sug­gest­ing peo­ple fol­low them? Are you just going through your Twit­ter list and sug­gest­ing them this week because it’s “their turn”? Are you sug­gest­ing them because it’s part of a give­away require­ment? Or are you sug­gest­ing them because they have some­thing to offer (humor, info, thoughts, what­ever) that I just can’t con­tinue on without?

   Love the idea of only sug­gest­ing one per­son per tweet on #Fol­lowFri­day where you actu­ally tell peo­ple WHY they rock!

   Reply
   • Jenny says:

     January 25, 2010 at 12:14 pm

     It just seems like com­mon sense doesn’t it? We’ll just have to make that sin­gle tweet #FF trend hot!

     Reply
2. Stacey_Says says:

   January 25, 2010 at 6:02 pm

   RT @Jenny86753oh9: I would love your thoughts on this! -> Fol­low Fri­day needs to be revamped http://www.86753oh9.com/2010/01/25/follo…

   Reply
3. Julie Arduini says:

   January 25, 2010 at 6:18 pm

   That’s a great idea, I agree with you. What I try to do is make use of my Twit­ter lists and uti­lize Tweet­deck as well. I have lists that are writ­ing related, media/celebrity or just peo­ple I heart. I usu­ally take a few peo­ple per list each Fri­day and do the #FF as folks from that list. That way writ­ers might find other writ­ers, etc… I think your idea is even better.

   Reply
4. mellenk says:

   January 26, 2010 at 1:07 am

   @Jenny86753oh9 I have NEVER done FF. Didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feel­ings if I left them out-plus-my friends r “cus­tomized” by me, for me.

   Reply
   • Jenny_Welton says:

     January 26, 2010 at 1:25 am

     @mellenk That’s a good thought on the #FF issue. If Twit­ter is used for per­sonal use it would be done differently.

     Reply
5. Denise Fick says:

   March 10, 2010 at 4:11 am

   Will def­i­nitely come back again tak­ing you feeds also, Thank you.

   Reply