#followfriday – are people missing the point?

December 20, 2010 12:38 pm admin Twitter

Nearly two years ago, #followfriday was born on Twitter.   Like many things online, it was something started with best intentions but I feel that some people are missing the point.

Each Friday they flood in – all the tweets inviting me to follow someone and quite often, there are several within one tweet.  And I think to myself:

“I follow you, and therefore I want to hear what you have to say on Twitter, but if you’re just going to give me a list of people to follow then it adds absolutely no value!”

In short, why am I going to spend the time to look at the profiles of people who are recommended, just to then possibly think “actually, there’s not much value in following them”?

However, if I saw a tweet similar to this then I’d be in a better position to decide:

#followfriday @kent-weather because they have great local updates on the snow situation

There’s no harm in doing more than one such tweet if there are more than one person worth following each week but perhaps there’s some merit in people stepping back and thinking “who really stood out for me this week and should be my #followfriday focus?”.  That person will feel more special than if amongst a list of several and the recipients of the tweet will consider it more closely.