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Micah May 24th

fixing #followfriday.

By now, most people know that #followfriday originated with me.

But thats not whats this post is about.

By now, most people that #followfriday has become the largest meme ever on twitter with, well…more #followfriday tweets sent than Ashton has followers (@aplusk followers < #followfriday tweets sent.)

But thats not whats this post is about.

For many people new to twitter, #followfriday has become a great way to discover new people to follow based on the recommendations of people that they trust.

Still not what this post is about.

Yet, with all the positives that surround #followfriday (searches for the words love and #followfriday reveal 10 times the number of results that searches for the words hate and #followfriday produce), for many people, #followfriday has morphed into something that can be a nuisance.

And thats what this post is about.

Since #followfriday began, I have gotten emails of suggestions on how to make #followfriday better. My response has been pretty consistent: “the cat is out of the bag”; “its like herding cats”; and “give the cat his stupid cheezburger!”

How can one person (me) effect change on something that so many (thousands and thousands of people) do every friday? There are plenty of blog posts out there that have made the suggestion that #followfriday tweets should be a couple of recommendations and reasons (which is how it began) rather than a list of usernames followed by the hashtag.

I even was asked on CNN about #followfriday, and I outlined how a basic #followfriday should look (one or two recommendations with reasons):

Yet, the ideas seem to keep heating up. My good friend Julia Roy wrote a great post on her thoughts on how to perfect the #followfriday tweet, which echoes many of the ideas that people have put out there across the web.

My favorite suggest to date was an example Steve Hall (an Old Timer in the industry *snicker*) who pointed me to this tweet by Don Knox:

Example of #followfriday

Which seems to be the best of both worlds.

I love the fact that so many people feel so strongly about keeping #followfriday useful for everyone, and that so many people feel such ownership over the meme, that they are all so vocal.

I believe as strongly today, Sunday, May 24, 2009, a full 129 days since #followfriday started, as I did on January 16. #followfriday has immense value to our community, and like anything that the community values, they are working hard at coming up with ideas on how to make it even better.

Would you please participate? How do we, collectively, continue the value of #followfriday?

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View Comments to “fixing #followfriday.”

  1. #followfriday suggestions without any reason as to why I should are meaningless to me. Yes, I want suggestions, but Yes, I want a brief reason as to why. I think @donknox has it right, as do you, @micah. Keep it limited. Keep it relevant. Tell me why. That's all.
    Thx Micah!

  2. Much as I love you and as I loved the original idea… I”m one of those for whom it has become a nuisance, rather than something I choose to participate in.

    I tried giving just 2 suggestions a week – with reasons. Then the DMs started pouring in “maybe you could put me as your #followfriday since I really need followers?” and “I've put you on my #followfriday a couple of times, can you get me back?” and “why do you only do 2 ppl? there are lots more deserving ppl out there who could use more followers like me” – to give you just a couple of examples.

    I agreed with your original intent – but I'm afraid that you're right – the cat is out of the bag. And while one or two cats is nice, a horde of feral cats is something to be avoided.

    I've gone back to my usual style of suggesting people to others when so moved. It doesn't need a hashtag. It just needs to be real.

  3. Good to see you on CNN, Micah. Now, I can get mainstream cred by telling people I once hung out with you. :)

  4. Love the Follow Friday as it imparts enthusiasm and energy! I have written an article on ehow for newbies so that they know HOW TO #FF. Personally I would love to change it to #FF since its faster to type. OH and I'm @alrady40 on twitter

    I also saw suggestion by person on building a landing page and I have twitwall now every friday with entry of all my recommendations. Some I have reasons for.

    I think the reasons make the recommendation stronger I also am personally lmiting my #FF to a favorite bunch PLUS the ones that have impacted or interacted in a significant way over the past week. I like INTERACTION. People that retweet for me or answer my dumb questions deserve a good #FF. (not flying fig -not fickle finger but a good follow friday)

    The downside is that posting a clickable link is more work to a twitwall than just doing the @xxx in the little posting box. Also many people may not see it because it isn't flying out to my 2K followers it is only the link to the page that is going out. So now I try to mix it up some.

    ONe thing I dont' like and I am guilty of doing it .. is thanks for the #FF … I also love being the subject of a RT but don't really like the RT of the FF. if you kwim (know what I mean)

    All in all FF is amazing, fun and useful to all. AND CONGRATS for such a great idea – it's the “cat's meow!”
    @alrady40

  5. I like the idea of keeping a limit to #FollowFridays and adding a bit of a description. On the other hand, maybe just let people do what they want – we all have the choice of paying attention or not, right?

  6. All about the “best of” or category-like #followfriday's too…if i see 6-7 @names w/ no info whatsoever, i just ignore. the whole “less is more” thing i suppose. but if it's one like the featured example above (@donknox), i'm 'bout it 'bout it!

  7. How do we, collectively, continue the value of #followfriday?

    It's going to be difficult and its not going to happen overnight. I think you should come up with a format, stick with it and push it. The major blogs that influences the majority of twitter users should embraces your format and start to it. After that if it works then the community will adopt (I think). If not it's over, #followfriday has been taken over by the community and they will continue to use it in it's original format. #followfriday……… It was a great idea.

    My 2cents.

  8. Thanks! I really want the community to understand that they own #followfriday (shoot they own Twitter) and should make this tool work for them in the best way possible…

  9. I certainly understand the DM's, but honestly, they are no more annoying than the dozen or so a day I get asking to RT this, or promote that. I also get yelled at publicly about not following people back, especially because of #followfriday.

    What I really wish was that there was a tool that could properly dissect the #followfriday tweets and create a real guide to people to follow by category, etc. Almost like a mashup of WeFollow and FollowFridays….hmmm, I should reach out to Kevin about that…

  10. LOL – Thanks Louis. I tried to give you a shout, but you are a friendfeed guy… :)

  11. I'll FriendFeed you in a second, Micah. Maybe I should take my Lijit shirt (which I am wearing now) to FriendFeed HQ and offer an exchange because you've moved on. I'm not “a friendfeed guy” any more than I'm “a Twitter expert” like I was called by a reporter yesterday. I'm me… everywhere.

  12. Thanks for your kind comment. What do you mean “clickable link”? Can I just say “I recommend @geekmommy because of her great combo of tech and social media savvy. #followfriday” Whats the clickable link? And what is a twitwall?

  13. Wayne, I think you are right on. Although many people assume that I have control over how people use #followfriday, I really dont. Its the community's and the community is going to have to make the change. Its easy to turn the oil tanker if we all do it together!

    Lets figure out a format and then pitch it collectively. I know it sounds cheezy, but our collective voices are much louder than anyone of us individually…

  14. “Im me… everywhere.” Words to live by.

  15. Yeah, I get the RT requests too… Don't mind them as much when they're from folks who have already built their own networks – it's the ones who I don't really know, have almost no network of their own, and who have never interacted with me who DM those that drive me nuts…

    I think that's probably why I wanted one less reason for people to DM me all offended.

    It's ironic that you get yelled at about following, b/c your original reasoning behind #followfriday wasn't about amassing large numbers of followers – it was about introducing each other to people we really ought to know about. I wouldn't have known Jeffrey w/o you – that was a great use of it for me… But when faced with huge long lists of people, I just scroll by.

    Let me know if anything comes of that thought about the mashup – that I would be interested in. Much more useful than long lists of userIDs :)

  16. You silver tongued devil! ;) That would be you in my book mister… Plus, you have that “Micah knows more about SEO and biz dev than I could know in 10 lifetimes” thing! :)

  17. There's no way you can control it Micah. Well done in explaining the different ways people can use it. Frankly, like Twitter, there's no wrong or right way to do it. We all have our preferences (like I blogged about recently), but in the end people will still be people. It's really the thought that counts in the end.

    Nice to see you on CNN – I always knew you were their material ;-)

  18. HI.. Twitwall is awesome.  A clickable link is one where when you click on the text it takes you straight to the url … so rather than saying @alrady40  I have to make a link such as @alrady40

    Twitwalls are free to every twitter user and basically are a microblog. Here is link to mine from there you shoudl easily be able to access  any of my friends twitwalls or your own! 
    Twitwall Alrady40

    Awesome Topic… and because of your article I refound JuliaRoy. I had followed her for ages and somehow in the growth last couple of months she disappeared froo my follow list, so I readded and we are back on mutual follow. THANKS

    Alrady

  19. I think part of the problem is that people are using #FollowFriday as a way of saying 'Thanks for following me. Here's your name on my #FollowFriday list.' instead of 'This guy is awesome. (And here's why.) Go follow him.'

    If you're going to participate in #FollowFriday in a way that will be valuable to your followers, the key is to limit the number of people you recommend (because if you're recommending 20 people per week, are you really recommending any of them?) and give a reason for each person. That way, your followers can figure out if they want to follow your suggestions without having to examine each one, and you can give meaningful recommendations that people will actually follow without getting overwhelmed.

  20. Way to go Micah for creating #followfriday first off. Second it's great to see you using the social aspect to of Social media to find ways to make it better. Why to be a thought leader.

  21. HI.. Twitwall is awesome.  A clickable link is one where when you click on the text it takes you straight to the url … so rather than saying @alrady40  I have to make a link such as @alrady40

    Twitwalls are free to every twitter user and basically are a microblog. Here is link to mine from there you shoudl easily be able to access  any of my friends twitwalls or your own! 
    Twitwall Alrady40

    Awesome Topic… and because of your article I refound JuliaRoy. I had followed her for ages and somehow in the growth last couple of months she disappeared froo my follow list, so I readded and we are back on mutual follow. THANKS

    Alrady

  22. I think part of the problem is that people are using #FollowFriday as a way of saying 'Thanks for following me. Here's your name on my #FollowFriday list.' instead of 'This guy is awesome. (And here's why.) Go follow him.'

    If you're going to participate in #FollowFriday in a way that will be valuable to your followers, the key is to limit the number of people you recommend (because if you're recommending 20 people per week, are you really recommending any of them?) and give a reason for each person. That way, your followers can figure out if they want to follow your suggestions without having to examine each one, and you can give meaningful recommendations that people will actually follow without getting overwhelmed.

  23. Way to go Micah for creating #followfriday first off. Second it's great to see you using the social aspect to of Social media to find ways to make it better. Why to be a thought leader.

  24. Great conversation happening here. For me, I've seen people flood my twitterstream with dozens of their friends on who to follow & until recently I was one of them who simply put “#followfriday – @micah @geekmommy @louisgray etc.” without any rhyme or reason – well okay, I knew why I was referring them and it wasn't because of a quid pro quo.

    So now that I'm noticing this issue about #followfriday becoming a nuisance for many people I wanted to make sure that people understood why. Simply inputting it in 140 characters isn't enough, but at least I can mention who they are that I'm recommending and then include a general link where people can see my rationale why I chose them. Rather than picking a random bunch of people I've gone ahead and gathered them into various themes (photographers, pr people, startups, movers & shakers etc.). These posts are probably the first and have made it more relevant to people to find out why:

    Here's the past blog posts that I've done for #followfriday. I think this makes it more interesting and relevant why I chose them: http://blog.thelettertwo.com/category/followfri...

  25. Having read some of the comments regarding #followfriday and am quite frankly a little alarmed.

    Do people really send DM's requesting #followfriday recommendations? Maybe I'm just English but you can't ASK for #followfriday reccomendations and if anyone did ask me I'd swiftly unfollow them.

    I occasionally #followfriday people but don't like doing more than one person per tweet. I won't click through a long list of people without reasons so I wouldn't expect anyone else to either. People can just look through who I'm following if that floats their boat.

  26. Nice job with the CNN vid; all one can do is make something like this as effective as possibble and reduce the unneeded noise.

    I recently asked a similar question on my blog – Is #FF jumping the shark?

    http://whatdidericsay.com/2009/05/7-ways-to-pre...

  27. short answer? Yes. You would be surprised at the things I am asked to do via
    DM.

  28. I'm not sure I want to know!? ;^)

  29. give a reason, do a few at a time (plenty of Friday's, after all), if you don't want to play then use TweetDeck or Twalala to filter out #followfriday tweets on Fridays – KISS. don't over-crowd source a good idea ;)

  30. Wait, Friendfeed is developer-centric? Kinda … but not really. They listen to their users.

  31. Really? Do you have an example?

  32. I like the premise, wish is were possible to go back to it, but now, with the world of high automation, we have people following people simply because they hope you will follow back and read their autoDM that wants you to buy their product that will teach you how to do what they are doing.

    I get a headache just trying to put it into words…lol

    Then I get the headache from the mass quantity of those DMs…

    It seems we have three main types of Tweeple. The Purists, the Moderates and the Commercial.

    Each of these sub-groups has their own sub-groups like the commerical have the Spammers, The Porn Brokers and the Marketers. So when you get a bunch of moderates and commercials #followfriday'ing each other, the purists tend to get all huffy and #unfollowthursday them.

    Personally I like a hybrid approach… I automate the tweeple I want to #FollowFriday each week, then I add a few new ones manually that I feel are particularly deserving of the #FollowFriday love. But I agree that I should add a reason for their addition into the #FollowFriday Fold.

    Thanks for starting a great tradition!

    Micheal @michealsavoie

  33. Well, this link will show you all the comments they've made in the Friendfeed Feedback room. They let people who ask for features know whether or not that feature is in development. And if there is an actual bug reported by a user they are quite fast at fixing it. http://friendfeed.com/search?q=comment%3Aana%2C...

  34. After a couple week of participating in #followfriday, I realized it was meaningless if I didn't put WHY I would recommend someone. So I add their @name, my reasons and maybe a link to there website or blog. I definitely get more reply's and TYs that way.

  35. I wrote an article about making #FollowFriday more manageable. My reasoning is that it's pretty hard to get on my recommended list and usually I have no reason to remove people from it. I keep a list and recommend people individually with a good description why you should follow them or in closely related groups. Some tweeps are members of several groups. I also use hashtags to further highlight them.

    I automated my #FollowFriday tweets to post with a 3-minute interval. That keeps me from flooding my friends with tweets. To those against automation, I agree with you that Twitter is built to be used interactively, but it's pretty pointless for me to manually post recommendations once every 2 minutes, especially since I recommend over 100 people :). Full disclosure – I use an affiliate link in my article.

    For those curious to learn more, please see http://bit.ly/p0cUV :)

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