by James Hofheins, founder of Utah LEADS. Follow him @jwhof.
If you’re like me, you have a favorite restaurant. Mine is in downtown Salt Lake City. Every Friday, they serve a fantastic lentil soup. When I worked closer, I would find a reason to show up every Friday. Just for the tasty lentil soup.
It was always worth it.
I once took a friend with me to try it out and was a little shocked to see that before even tasting it, she salted it. I never had to do that, for the soup was always seasoned just right.
I used to have the same Friday relationship with Twitter.
Every Friday, I would find a reason to log on, just to experience the tasty goodness of the phenomenon we all know as Follow Friday.
Follow Friday was started in January, 2009 by Micah Baldwin (@micah) with just one tweet:
What a fantastic idea! I was excited to learn of something that would help me find other users, without having to do much more than set up a filter or search the term #followfriday.
In my early days on Twitter, the Follow Friday soup was always seasoned just right. When I would log on, I would see recommendations from my followers telling me who they thought I would be interested in following, and they would tell me what was special about them. They always gave me context and a good reason to at least check out the bios, recent tweets and the profiles of the users they recommended. Deciding whether or not to follow these users was relatively simple.
But then, other chefs came into the kitchen and started pouring salt into the soup.
Instead of a few Follow Friday recommendations that were specific and targeted, now I’m seeing followers recommend every person they follow. There’s no context, no reason given for what makes the recommended people special. It’s just tweet after tweet of packed recommendations in a single tweet, and multiple tweets in a row.
If my favorite restaurant had suddenly begun pouring all the salt into their famous Lentil soup, I would have complained to the management and asked them to have a chat with the chef. If I got no satisfaction from the management, I would abandon the place (or at least the soup) on Fridays.
With Twitter, however, we are the chefs. We are the only ones who can control our desire to pour every follower into our twitstreams. We are the ones who have the power to stop ruining the Follow Friday soup and bring it back to a perfect balance of targeted and specific recommendations.
We are the ones who know who our followers are and what makes them special. Therefore, we are the ones who can recommend with a reason.
We are the ones who have the ability to salt and season the Follow Friday soup without overdoing it.
So, here are a few recommendations to bring Follow Friday back to its perfectly seasoned tasty goodness:
- When you recommend followers for Follow Friday, recommend one to three people at a time. Tell us what makes them special. Tell us why you follow them, and why you think we should follow them as well.
- Don’t recommend every single one of your followers. When you do, it makes me want to unfollow you, just so my twitstream isn’t so cluttered.
- If there’s one of your followers who you want to recommend to a specific follower, recommend them in an @message, again telling them why you think it would be worthwhile for them to follow.
- If you’re not following someone, don’t recommend them. This is a deceptive practice that, as far as I can see, is only used to artificially boost the follow count of the one recommending.
@angesbiz
I agree and yet am guilty of doing just that for a while! It seems tweeps want to join in but don’t the proper etiquette or how to make it more interesting giving you a desire to check out your recommendations. I have inadvertently missed the last 3 Fridays and cringe when I open my tweetdeck to see countless @messages with masses of people to follow.
Thanks for the reminder of what Follow Friday is and I will remember not to put too much salt in the soup!
@ilanbr
The problem might start when those who recommend you (say, you got 10-15 people putting your name on they FF lists) , expect to be recommended back.
.
I agree that FF became a huge mess lately. But the consideration is also between those who will unfollow you because they don’t longer enjoy the ’soup’ and those who weren’t served
@vnesdoly
I so totally agree! I’m relatively new to twitter, so have mostly watched the #FF phenom. It seemed pretty meaningless to me – mostly a way to send back thanks to people who have retweeted you.
But this week I actually joined in. I guess by accident I did what you said – recommended a handful of people for specific reasons (actually not by accident – a few people I follow use #FF that way and I like it).
@victorliew
I agree.
The first time I experienced Follow Friday, I wondered what it was all about.
The second Friday, I caught on and I felt guilty for not recomending anyone
By the third Friday, I was wondering about these people and why was I told to follow them.
By my fourth Friday, I began to feel a touch annoyed at the majority of recommmenders. It was beginning to feel like spam…
Now, one or two Follow Fridays with coherent recommendations, would only then lead me to checking up first on the person, then only would a decision to follow be made.
Or else I simply ignore….
@1winedude
Funny thing is, I didn’t know of followfriday until *after* it became a shout-fest. So I never really took part. But I just might now, but will stick to one recco only. Totally agree it would make the whole thing far more digestible.
Cheers!
@MeredithGould@twitter.com
After noticing the rapid devolution of Follow Friday, I decided to participate every 4-6 weeks and then highlight tweeps who have become new to me during that time period.
I take as a given that the folks with whom I have regular ongoing communications within a particular cohort (e.g., healthcare marketing, living lives of faith) already know one another because, well, they do! I reintroduce those tweeple when I notice a significant change in follows who might not know one another.
As for the warm fuzzy glow of being singled out, I send notes of appreciation and gratitude as DM to those who have indeed become dear to me — thanks to this medium.
@NicksTraffic
I totally agree.
On Fridays there seems be a proliferation of suggestions to follow random people without any explanation.
I wrote a blog post about how we should change #FollowFriday to #SingleFollowFriday and devote the remaining characters to why you should follow this person:
http://nickstraffictricks.com/1111_lets-change-followfriday-to-singlefollowfriday/
@Teeg
I love your comparison. One of the things I’ve really appreciated on social networking sites is getting introduced to some great people and being able to introduce someone you think your friends would enjoy knowing. But I’ve often wondered how many people really pay attention when a list of people pops up on their screen followed by #followfriday and nothing else.
@tomredwine
Guilty – though I only recommend one person per post, last Friday I couldn’t help but recommend 8 different folks! I promise to cut this in half (to four recommendations) for next Friday. It’s tough deciding, because I am following a bunch of folks, though I’d like to think the ones I’m recommending are certainly worthy of following.
Let’s see how I do next week. (Now I know what my Twitter homework for the week is!)
@guestblogme
The idea behind #followfriday is certainly good soup, but lately it leaves a lot to be desired. Merely posting or being mentioned in a #ff recommendation is enough to attract random-character spam followers.
Let’s be honest, I love being recommended. We all adore the ego boost. But I honestly wonder what the click-thru ratio is – how many recommendations actually result in a follow, by the people you’d really want to interact with. I’m sure it’s not a huge number. In fact, the most common response to a recommendation seems to be to RT it, which simply compounds the issue.
I’ve chosen to do something radically different with my #ff recs. I blog them and tweet the link maybe three or four times to get timezone coverage, and that’s it. Basically if anyone’s interested in my rec’s, they’ve already had to be interested in my updates enough to even see the tweet, and then had to click on a link to go to the page. Seems to do a little to dodge the spambots – I may not get many visits, but the people who do check out the link are more likely to be good-quality followers in the first place who’ll appreciate good-quality recommendations. Quality over quantity, every time.
@vpmedical
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I have been saying this for some time. I used to enjoy participating and following some of the new recommendations. Now I tend to avoid it altogether. I do have people I would like to recommend. I always try to share things about my recommendations so others can decide to review or not based on their interest in that “category” or not. I do find that I tend to recommend the same folks over and over. I have so many great twitter friends that really should be recommended that I have decided to make a blog post to tweet on Friday’s with my recommendations. I am so glad you put this our there in print for everyone and hope everyone reads this post and will adhere to it for future #followfriday tweets! Let’s make it fun again! or else it is No Soup For You!
@ironked
I thought the shotgun approach was how it was supposed to be done. I have participated a couple of times, but never more than 3 or 4 follows with no explanation. Most cases most likely well known names. I have noticed the stacked tweets and thought how useless. The only place it might be apropos is in a # group where interests are similar. I like your approach and will start using it. Quality, and why, over quantity.
@judielise, celebratec
I am fine with your list, except for #4. When I joined Twitter over a year ago, people took a look at profiles and tweets before they judged whether the person was legit. Perhaps due to the sheer volume, people are making snap judgments and sweeping generalities.
I committed this “error” once after I opened my second account. I tweeted from both accounts to recommend someone to the autism community and the second account was attacked! I mean, it felt like a TwitterMob! I was so shocked! Never mind that I used my real name of both accounts, same location, and had twittered about opening a 2nd account and why. The person I recommended attacked me for my “puny” number of followers (compared to theirs) and said I was a wannabe. A bunch of other people joined in to RT! Needless to say, I have never recommended that person again. And lately, they wrote on Facebook, their growing disgust with Twitter and the number of messages they receive. That is what happens when you follow over 5000 people you don’t know!
Some people are on Twitter for the interaction and the ability to connect people, not for a numbers game (which annoys me to no end!). If someone recommends you, perhaps, you can just say “thank you,” whether you follow them or not.
Obviously, Twitter has reached the stage for the need to stereotype. So sad.
@Esther_Silvera
For a newbie to Twitter, this was a great read – thank you for the suggestions and insight. Because I love lentil soup it all makes sense!
Cheers and all the best!
@jwhof
Thanks for the great comments, folks. Mine was an outline of a few suggestions. As a community, we can make #followfriday the wonderful tasty soup it once was!
James Hofheins
@askaaronlee
Wow.. i like the way your write with the friday soup metaphor
Agree with you completely
@JamieSanford
It has come to the point where I think #followfriday was a spectacular idea but that it completely got out of hand, as described here. I wrote a post about what I think we should focus on – quality retweeting.
http://www.jamiesanford.com/2009/06/11/quality-retweeting-is-the-new-followfriday/
Let’s put our money where our mouth is and think before we retweet and let those retweets show who we think is great on Twitter.
@faceonmars
Follow Friday has become totally disfunctional do to the ADVARTS who are just collecting tweeps to follow around and scream thier pitch to. I do not participate in selling out my few friends on Twitter to ADVARTS!
Unless Twitter wants to go the way of other fads they need to clean up the way people are followed or it really will be (Twitter, that is) just a giant chat room.
@tanyaryno
Thank you! You don’t know how many people I have stopped following because they take up my home page on Friday’s with tweet after tweet of their Follow Friday recommendations.
Not to mention I never follow anyone from a tweet that has a million people in it, however I will take the time to find out about people that have been recommended with a little note about why I should follow them.
Cheers!
@linnetwoods
Love the lentil soup analogy! It had got to the point where I was feeling terrible guilt that so many people were including me in their #followfriday tweets and I hadn’t been able to add any new people to my #followfriday web pages on my Twitterhood site, so I was thanking people for their recommendations in groups but even that amounted to the equivalent of spam.
Your suggestion of singling out one to three people and giving reasons why one might wish to follow them is a great idea and one which I will definitely adopt.
Thanks for putting the whole #followfriday circus into perspective!
@jwhof
Linet,
You bring up a very important point – the guilt factor. I can’t tell you how many times I see multiple mentions of me but feel guilt because I don’t reciprocate. Sometimes I can’t reciprocate because I’m mobile some Friday’s and it’s not easy to retweet from my mobile.
Thanks to you (and to everyone else) for valuable Follow Friday comments!
James Hofheins
@coreyfreeman
I’ve just recently started working with tip #1, and I have to say, seeing others do the same really does add value to #followfriday. While I appreciate the recommendation, it really annoys me to login to twitter on Fridays and find list upon list of recommendations. Hopefully more people will begin to follow these guidelines.
@jwhof
Thanks for the comment, Corey. I’m starting to see some changes for the better – I am by no means a perfect tweeter (twit?) but I hope to learn from others, too.
James Hofheins
@BradleyWill
What was once a great resource has become a hot mess! Great post on eliminating all the noise with follow Friday. Recommending everyone you trade tweets with and their brother, aunt, and second cousin twice removed really does not make someone want to return the favor. The only #followfriday love I respond to is the unique tweets about me, or like you said, one with maybe 3 people in it. Don’t you love it when someone dedicates a #followfriday just to you? If you do, it would be a great idea to do a similar thing. COOL TIP: Record a for that special touch…
~
@jwhof
Bradley,
Great comment, and yes(!) I do love it when a Follow Friday post is directed at me. I think we all do!
James Hofheins
@MarieKratsios
I agree that sometimes #FF gets a little out of hand, but I have to say that I am happy to recommend those who engage in conversation on Fridays. My one question is,if someone does recommend you in a #FF tweet, is it polite to recommend them back in a #FF tweet or would that be considered a bit self-serving?