Stop Follow Friday Insanity

I hate this phenomenon on Twitter called Follow Friday (referred to via the #ff and #followfriday hashtags). Get ready for a big dose of hater-ade because I’ve endured this crap for the past few Friday’s, filling up my Twitter stream and it’s gone beyond the point of ridiculous. So why am I hatin’?

Conceptually Follow Friday is cool. It’s a day to try and expand your Twitter network by taking recommendations from your followers on other people worth following. Simple enough. But the whole damn thing is missing the target. That said, here’s my Follow Friday *censormode*-list:

  • My first gripe with Follow Friday is some people will recommend far too many people. Some people even have multiple tweets giving a half dozen or more suggestions. Seriously, you can’t give this whole thing a bit more thought and recommend just a few worthwhile suggestions?
  • All you get in a Follow Friday tweet is the Twitter username. Follow Friday tweets don’t bother telling me why someone is being suggested. That is sort of pointless because now I have to dig into their Twitter timeline and fine out if they are truly follow-worthy which is an exercise in futility especially if you are guilty of the first bullet.
  • Why Friday? Sure, Follow Friday sounds cute but aren’t people follow-worthy the other six days fo the week?
  • Oh, and my biggest *censormode* about the whole Follow Friday phenomenon is the follow-up tweet where the person being recommended in a Follow Friday tweet thanks the person who suggested them. No, the thought is fine but make it a direct message and don’t further clog my Friday timeline even more Follow Friday crap


Ok, so I’ve got that off my chest. Now let’s go a step further and turn this into constructive criticism by suggesting better ways you can implement Follow Friday:

  • Limit the number of suggestions you make. Give that limited number of suggestions some thought.
  • Give a reason your followers should follow the person you are recommending someone. Consider going a step further by writing up a short blog entry why someone should be followed. This has added benefits of not being lost on search.twitter.com after a few weeks) and it acts as a place your followers can go to get more recommendations by you.
  • Try making recommendations on days other than Friday. Sure, then you can’t call it Follow Friday anymore but I think your followers will appreciate getting one recommendation a few days per week than a dozen all at once all without a stated reason

Ok, I know all this probably came off negative and I know there are a lot of Friday Follow lovers out there. Keep doing what you do, but please, consider taking some of this advice to make it more meaningful to all your followers.