‘Follow Friday’ is the weekly Twitter tradition where users attach the hashtag #followfriday to share the Twitter ID’s of their favourite friends and news sources with followers.
It might still be the the biggest Trending Topic on Twitter every Friday, but is its popularity fading? This graph, which shows the phrase’s popularity amongst all Tweets over the past six months, would suggest so.
As new members continue to flock to Twitter, are Follow Friday’s original aims being lost?
The meme, which only began in January 2009, began to attract criticism from the blogs not long after it became popular.
Follow Friday has been decried as ‘disingenuous and spammy’ by some, as commercial organisations saw it as a way to to promote goods, services and offers, whilst everyday Twitter users simply reciprocated any #followfriday mentions they received by sending a simple reciprocal Tweet straight back, with little thought.
A new App in the iTunes App Store this week will do little to offset this criticism. Follow Friday Generator automatically generates a #followfriday tweet for you based on the people you talk to most.
This is fine, but your most chatty followers might not be the ones you wish to recommend to your network. On testing the service, it came up with the people I’d chatted to most recently over the past few days rather than over time, so I expect that the list it creates will change each week.
Seeing as I now have the app, I’ll stick with it for a while to see what happens. If you are new to Twitter and haven’t discovered the joys of #followfriday yet, maybe give the app a try or simply do it the ‘old-fashioned’ way and manually create your own short list of those on Twitter that you think your followers will most enjoy reading.
I despise Follow Friday. I have told the few people I follow not to put me forward for it. Why would I want others who I neither know (or want to know) follow my pathetic musings on my boring life.
However, I regularly post false Follow Fridays. This week, I have used serial killers @JohnWayneGacy @DrHaroldShipman @TedBundy @StephenSpeilberg This gives me great pleasure and I urge others to do the same
It had it’s day, and has been a moronic idea for years now. :-P.
This comment was originally posted on FriendFeed
I thought Follow Friday died on Black Friday (Friday before Christmas) when the term didn’t even make the Top Twitter Trending Topics. But it seems to be making a comeback today.
Personally, I stopped participating in May, it just seemed like it had run its course.
Argh! I meant Black Friday is the Friday after Thanksgiving, of course. Where is the Edit feature??
I get a lot of follow-friday mentions. Those have been steadily declining in the second half of the year, to the point where I get nearly none now.
Do a little more research and you will find that though #followfriday is declining, more people are simply switching to #ff to save on characters. Also, check this post out I wrote about some of the changes taking place: http://mashable.com/2009/11/27/twitter-lists-followfriday/
I have to admit that I never use the complete #FollowFriday tag and only use #FF. I try to only list 1 to 3 people and the reason I think they are worth following. I do not use this every week any more. I was just wondering about the decline of #FF early this morning.
yes #ff can be overused by most users, the face that they just keep retweeting a #ff list that they are on, and they don’t even follow them..
But #ff does hold a special place in my tweets, bcuz it’s like going to a social even per say ( twitter ) and introducing your friend to your friends ( #ff ) therefore it’s like a networking process, and it’s more then the people you know, it’s the people that know you. =) #imho
First let me thank Tim for writing this article about my application and the decline of #followfriday. I do agree with most of the comments that all people do is Retweet posts that they are in. It’s understandable. It takes too much time looking through your @replies and finding people that are worth noting, composing a list and then sending it. This is especially hard on an iPhone.
My motive for making this app was to make it easier for users to compose a list automatically of their OWN followers, not people they aren’t following. This will hopefully bring back the essence of #followfriday back
I agree with tunguy3n that #ff can be overused. Where I will disagree with the others is that I actually like when my friends and colleagues recommend someone. A #ff tweet is especially meaningful if it comes from someone I trust. I know that more often than not the person getting recommended has already been vetted and will contribute to the conversation as opposed to just broadcasting noise.
I never just blindly retweet a #ff post if my name is mentioned, but I will send a thank you.
Seems that I’m one to go against the flow.
I do #FF using my twitter list(s). It gives people the choice of following the list or going through it for the tweople they don’t follow yet.
I do recommend a person for #FF in a single tweet when warranted. I have been known to unfollow people who do many long tweets of name after name w/o a break.
Here’s what I don’t get — if Twitter is suppose to be about sharing media and information, why are people perceiving it as spam-like? If I truly like the recommended profiles, then is it really spam on a system that was designed as an internet PR system to begin with? Plus, Twitter is still relatively new that it has the styrofoam nuts from being unwrapped; There are still many people sorting out how to use Twitter, so retweets to quickly send out your suggested FF as a reciprocation should be understandable. The best improvements in traffic seem to come from those who reciprocate as well as send actual commentary.
I agreed with Vadim’s point that the switch to FF may be a reason behind the Follow Friday stats.
Great post. I will make a mention on my blog, if possible.