The problem is - like almost everything good - the original purpose of it has gotten lost over time. Too many people are just generating bulk lists of recommends without any further explanation of it. Unless you are just chasing follower numbers, this really doesn't do very much good.
As my own follower count has skyrocketed, FollowFriday's have become more difficult. The last 2 weeks I spent most of my time just thanking those that recommended me. It's not that I don't appreciate it - I do. But it clogs up the stream for everyone if I tweet 100+ thanks containing a half dozen or more people. I'm having to change the way I handle this to both maintain my own sanity as well as to do my part to conserve the integrity of the original concept.
Each week I'll make an effort to prepare a limited list of people I really do recommend & who I can give a specific reason why I recommend them. I'll either blog or tweet about these people on Friday's. For the most part, I'll try and focus on what I consider to be undiscovered shining stars. People that just stand out to me for some reason. People I truly feel that at least some of you will enjoy your Twitter experience more by getting to know them.
I'll blog the list later. Meanwhile, for those of you that have recommended me for FollowFriday - huge thanks to you. I really do appreciate that you thought enough of me and enjoy my tweets enough to do so. :)
9 comments:
My strategy is to recommend one, and only one, person each Friday. I also do a short blog post about them. If I can't come up with stuff for a short blog post, they must not be worth recommending.
This is more personal, more heartfelt, and gives them a link to their blog too. :)
~Shawn K (@thattalldude)
I almost always give a reason why someone should follow my #FollowFriday reccommendations. Sometimes it is as simple as "This person will make you reexamine your thoughts" to "This person gives great solutions." I dont really care about the follower number as I do about the relationships I have built.
It's a difficult thing. I'm trying to do a bit of both at the moment. I have a list of about 10 people that I personally recommend each week, and those are most probably my top people that I feel I connect with on a regular basis in twitterland. The problem I have, is that they aren't the only people in my twitter stream that I appreciate. There are people that I speak on and off too during the week, there are those who tweet or retweet lots of great design or other interesting links, and although I may not have a LOT to say about them, they still have a lot of value to me, because of the info they share.
I feel in a quasi-karmic way, I'm trying to encourage people to follow the people I've found valuable to follow in one way or another. What I've tried to do to offset a simply random list, is to prepend #followfriday tweets with a hash category they'd best fall into. The main categories I tend to use are #design, #gr8links, #nicepeeps and #verycool. These, I hope, add some value to the reason for the bulk list, and hopefully, exposes people to a large group of people that I have personally found good to have around, for one reason or the other.
Cam (@cameronolivier)
I believe allot of people on twitter are great 'in different ways you can learn something from anyone don't descriminate followers maybe just simply unfollow or block, but how Shawn K. could you possibly only rec 1 person every friday? that's 52 tweep rec# follows a year bud, maybe you could double or tripple your efforts and business will follow ya.
I don't do the official #FF, as I try to promote my friends all through the week. When someone honors me with a #FF, I either RT them or make a comment about their value to hopefully spur genuine interest for other tweeters to check them out. This is the same thing I do every day, and I think it works better in promoting my friends, and they don't get lost in the crowd since recommendations of them aren't competing with all the #FFs.
I usually recommend people, based on the last weeks replies and dialog.
I also recommend people new to twitter that I know personally and need just a little boost to start using twitter
:)
Great post! I agree with your efforts and that #followfriday loses much of it's pizazz when people spew lots of people to follow for no reason at all. You also challenge me to take special care to my highlights and I appreciate that. Keep up the good work :)
I like this idea. This past #FollowFriday was the most humbling and feel good day in my Twittastic history (and you, of course, were one of my recommended fierce female Twittabulous favorites as usual!) and I need a better format.
You've given me something to be inspired by as far as a #FollowFriday hall of fame sort of format for my blog. I don't know how I'm going to do it exactly just yet, but I want to have a place where more than 140 character #FF love can live on every day of the week.
Thanks for being a Twitter role model for the female social media future rock stars!
@Web20Empire
I think what I've seen go wonky with the whole follow friday thing since I started (mid-Feb 2009) is that I have people RT'ing other's #followfriday recommendations without actually FOLLOWING the person they are recommending! (Did that make sense?!)
Like, it's cool, I get followers that way...but I don't recommend anyone that I don't personally follow and have had some dialog with. =)
Melissa (@RC73)
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