Thursday 21 May 2009

Follow Friday can Bugger Off…



This post has moved to my dedicated Twitter Blog.

Click here to read it now


Thank you and big hugs.

Angela.

16 comments:

  1. Absolutely love this blog, and this idea. Am proud to be in on the ground floor, on what is obviously going to be a well followed, and well read blogsite. Welcome to the land of self-doubt, you are going to love it. @goonerjamie

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  2. Love it! Someone started using #followfridayfail for folks just listing people's names. Since you know I'm freaky about following and unfollowing (in my own particular neurotic way), I really appreciate having the "why" follow.

    For what it's worth, despite my earlier crankypants tweet, I'd #followfriday you (and goonerjamie) for all of your tweets with multiple words. Only whining about the haha tweets since I'm a luddite not using tweetdeck or the like. Also, I suggest people *not* followfriday me, since I'm not seeking new followers. :-)

    Off to share your post. A fun read.

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  3. I think it's a great idea, and I fully intend to join you in doing it ... just as soon as I've sussed out how to mark favourites in DestroyTwitter ...

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  4. I could not agree with you more - I prefer to introduce great tweeps one-to-one, with a real intro that clarifies why I think they'll enjoy each other's company. Those long, rote lists offer me little value, on either the giving or receiving side, and the implied obligation to return the favor is often uncomfortable. I also doubt I'm the only one who looks at some people's lists and thinks, "Hmm. Maybe I shouldn't be following YOU."

    I typically don't participate in the FF frenzy, but as I tweeted a couple weeks ago, every Follow Friday I feel like a party guest who rudely brought nothing for the hosts. I don't know if our approach bothers other people or not, but if it does, maybe posts like yours will help them understand that we're trying to be thoughtful rather than ungenerous - and that we're more interested in a lively, rousing Twitter experience than in high follower numbers.

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  5. Oops - forgot to say thanks for including me in your Favorites. I'm honored!

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  6. Well thank you my lovely for including me in your list of tweeps to follow! I am a BadFollower who actually frequently fails to particpate in #followfriday at all. I may now switch to #fridayfavourites instead! You are my inspiration. xx

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  7. I agree with every last comma. Writing Christmas cards is a great analogy, though it's even surpassed that for me and become like writing thank you notes.

    Will follow your example. Brilliant idea. Vive la revolution. Who shall we shoot first?

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  8. Thanks for the idea! I discovered refollow.com a couple of weeks ago and found that out of all the people I follow there were 259 I would recommend in #followfriday but to do that in one go would be meaningless and probably not gain them many followers at all.

    The reason those 259 stood out whilst going through them were because they were all people that have tweeted amusing or insightful things over the past couple of months (I have the memory of an elephant!) and so your idea fits perfectly with that. I will most definitely be pinching it! Thanks :0)

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  9. Fab blog and idea - and am honoured to be in your favourites roll-call, thank you (*breathes sigh of relief that this won't be RT'd be a bot*)

    I really love the Christmas card comment - that sums it up exactly, and though I'm pleased that people like what I write and want to recommend me to be followed - Fridays become such effort, trying to find actual meaningful/funny tweets in between the endless #ff's, and worse than them, are the people that just RT all of the #ff's they've been noted in - they drive me mad!!

    It's funny you've done this - I had the same thought today about writing a blog to recommend my favourite peoples rather than followfriday-ing them. I love the favouriting idea - probably what the function was initially intended for, hey?

    *Bravo* you - I'm so glad that we're going to start abolishing the bastard thing! Shall we trend #fuckofffollowfriday ? ;)

    nik_kee_dee
    =) x

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  10. Thank you, thank you for this wonderful idea! I just did my first follow friday, and did the list, because there were so many good "tweeters" I wanted to recommend, and didn't want more than a couple posts on it. This favorites idea will work much better - thank you!

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  11. Brilliant solution to the #FF syndrome!

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  12. LIke it! My problem is I use favourites for much more than just literally my favourite tweets. It'd be great if there were subcategories with it, as for instance in email. May start doing this though, #ff has become very spammy, & a bit socially awkward as you point out.

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  13. You're entitled to use Twitter as you like of course, but I find your description of the problem weird. Who said that you *must* #ff every friday? More importantly, who said that you *must* return #ffs in kind? Don't you realise that this destroys the whole point of an #ff? I click your #ffs because I think you genuinely like them, not because I think you are returning a favour from someone. Do you realise that you are lying to me when you do this? No 'scratchback' is worth becoming a liar, in my book. Also, you are not doing your scratchbacks any favours, because you are going to end up with a huge #followfriday list that few will ever click on. When I see somebody tweeting multiple #followfriday tweets, I just assume that they are doing scratchbacks and I therefore ignore all of their recommendations.

    When somebody includes you in a list of say, three, and you include them in a list of twenty,

    #followfridays are for people you like and really think are exciting to follow right now: this is what your readers expect them to be, and you know this. If you use them to repay favours from others instead, then why isn't that dishonest and corruptive to the system?

    The way I see it, you never used #followfridays the way it was intended, as a service to the reader, and instead perceived it as a service to the person you are naming. This twisted you up in a whole set of obligations and quicksand that forced you to abandon the field that you invented.

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  14. Brilliant idea my dear Angpang. What a clever girl you are. Sadly, you have shattered my (false) air of sophistication - the world at large knows I hang out at Sainsbury's and Matalan.
    Have to admit - have never EVER done a fridayfollow - good idea originally but got a bit mad. Well done you for sorting it out.
    Looking forward to your MeMeMe answers... but make sure you answer them... not copywrite them... i know you wot you advertising types are like..;)X

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  15. THANK YOU ALL. Blog has got a big thumbs up so far, with almost all saying they hate the FF list-fest and like the sound of this alternative.

    Lots of very helpful questions and ideas from people too. I editied this damn thing about 10 times yesterday to incorporate them all.

    Love you (hate you for making me re-write so much) but mostly love you.

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  16. Excellent solution to the long list "hi-five" syndrome. Very clever. x

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