I remember when Follow Friday (aka #followfriday) first started making its way around Twitter in January by @micah (Thanks to the Twitterers today for helping me remember it was Micah Baldwin). I thought it was a great idea at the time, as it is often hard to understand where you need to go to find new valuable people to follow on Twitter. If I really enjoy following X Twitterer and X Twitterer suggests I follow Y&Z Twitterer, I just might listen and click through and check 'em out.
It is no question that Follow Friday's popularity has exploded and just continues to grow, but my feelings toward it have changed. I have a very hard time understanding its value anymore. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, Twitter is growing rapidly and there is a lot more noise than there was even merely 5 months back when Follow Friday started. Secondly, now with Twitter auto follow friday bots from services like TwitterMass and TweetLater most of these "recommendation" tweets are just randomized spam.
As I see it, the #followfriday hashtag has spread so quickly because it's a great way to say "Hey everyone, these are some of my favorite people on Twitter!" But now with the Twitter community growing so fast, people's following is growing with it and we have to sift through the noise in order to find people of real value to follow. So now, simply listing your favorite Twitterers in tweet on Friday's, is not very helpful.
The solution? Well, I know that others on Twitter have been suggesting this development as well, but #followfriday needs to evolve in a way where on Friday everyone suggests a few people they like to follow and WHY. These can be multiple tweets, but the most important thing is including the context in which you are suggesting someone to follow.
If you want to understand where my frustration with #followfriday is coming from, check out my TweetDeck on Fridays. I should be flattered, but I just get annoyed because on Friday's I have a hard time seeing real @ conversations because of all the #followfriday tweets coming in. *sigh*
