{"id":135,"date":"2009-03-20T13:46:25","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T18:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.adam-jackson.net\/?p=135"},"modified":"2009-03-20T13:46:25","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T18:46:25","slug":"a-perceived-value-of-followfriday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/03\/20\/a-perceived-value-of-followfriday\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2605 A Perceived Value of #FollowFriday"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:15065,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.flickr.com\\\/photos\\\/adamjackson\\\/3370255229&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20190120233143\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.flickr.com\\\/photos\\\/adamjackson\\\/3370255229\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-06 08:10:12&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-01-22 09:09:14&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-11 18:36:54&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-18 04:48:36&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-02-27 17:57:47&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-10 23:14:20&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-15 18:00:18&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-20 16:50:00&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 03:43:02&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 03:43:02&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:15066,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/search.twitter.com\\\/search?q=%23followfriday&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20110511233808\\\/https:\\\/\\\/search.twitter.com\\\/search?q=&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-06 08:10:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2025-11-06 08:10:13&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:520},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p><a title=\"#FollowFriday by adamjackson1984, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/adamjackson\/3370255229\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img  loading=\"lazy\"  decoding=\"async\"  class=\"alignleft pk-lazyload\"  src=\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABAQMAAAAl21bKAAAAA1BMVEUAAP+KeNJXAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAAAlwSFlzAAAOxAAADsQBlSsOGwAAAApJREFUCNdjYAAAAAIAAeIhvDMAAAAASUVORK5CYII=\"  alt=\"#FollowFriday\"  width=\"299\"  height=\"500\"  data-pk-sizes=\"auto\"  data-pk-src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3469\/3370255229_d1583bb5e8.jpg\" ><\/a> I&#8217;ve been very honored to have a great group of followers on Twitter and all of you make my day go by a lot faster. Your unique content, hilarious replies and interesting links keep things fun. The latest trend in Twitter is <a href=\"http:\/\/search.twitter.com\/search?q=%23followfriday\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">#FollowFriday<\/a>. The idea is simple. Pick a few people that you love following on Twitter, tag the tweet with #followfriday and mention which people you think your followers should also follow.<\/p>\n<p>The idea is perfect for Twitter which is an ecosystem built of recommendations, suggestions, sharing and influence. The users grasp to this concept because they have a chance to recommend their favorite Twitter users and at the same time, users get a bit of an ego boost in the form of being recommended to be followed. Aside from that, there is zero value in FollowFriday. If the value of Twitter is to get some ego boost with a mix of interesting information and social interaction time wasting then FollowFriday fits right into that model.<\/p>\n<p>Some would argue that&#8217;s what Twitter is for and this post isn&#8217;t meant to argue that fact but the reality is that #FollowFriday continues to grow each week and the value of #FollowFriday continues to drop. Earlier today I sent a tweet that said&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>ANNOUNCEMENT: If you recommend me for #followfriday, I will probably follow you back :)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>45 people recommended me for #FollowFriday after that but my name was buried in a tweet with 5 other Twitter names. If #FollowFriday is being done by everyone you follow, well you&#8217;d be following thousands of new people every Friday. It&#8217;s ineffective and therefore this act of goodwill turns into noise. It blips on my Twitter reader as a reply and I&#8217;m on the edge of filtering out all of the tweets containing the hashtag because the noise is just too much.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the day, #FollowFriday is only valuable to those recommending and those being recommended. Forgive my choice of an example but let&#8217;s think of it like a toilet. The person doing the dumping has a sign of relief while the toilet is proud to be used for its intended purpose. Everyone else in the bathroom just gets a whiff of stink and is pretty turned off by the experience. This is how I feel about #FollowFriday. Since I&#8217;ve been the toilet nearly 50 times today, I say thanks because it&#8217;s cool being recommended but at the end of the day I&#8217;ve only gained 15 followers. That&#8217;s 15 new followers after 45 times of being recommended. Most of my followers have over 500 followers. That means after possibly being seen as a recommendation by 22 thousand people, I only walk away with 15 new followers.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not saying #FollowFriday is a waste of time but I am saying that it&#8217;s intended purpose isn&#8217;t the end result and there are better ways to recommend people and &#8220;dumping in a toilet&#8221; isn&#8217;t the best approach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I&#8217;ve been very honored to have a great group of followers on Twitter and all of you make&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_cover_media_provider":"image","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_cover_video_id":0,"apple_news_cover_video_url":"","apple_news_cover_embedwebvideo_url":"","apple_news_is_hidden":"","apple_news_is_paid":"","apple_news_is_preview":"","apple_news_is_sponsored":"","apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":[],"apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"csco_singular_sidebar":"","csco_page_header_type":"","csco_custom_appearance":"","csco_disable_excerpt_posts_layout":false,"csco_page_load_nextpost":"","csco_post_video_location":[],"csco_post_video_location_hash":"","csco_post_video_url":"","csco_post_video_bg_start_time":0,"csco_post_video_bg_end_time":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-135","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ideas","7":"cs-entry","8":"cs-video-wrap"},"apple_news_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pb3IC4-2b","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":282,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/05\/05\/how-to-achieve-16k-followers-overnight\/","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":0},"title":"\u2605 How to Achieve 16K Followers OVERNIGHT!","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"May 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Twitter is only 3 years old but in Internet years, it\u2019s been around the block a few times. A lot of people join, follow the \u201csuggested users\u201d and then they might invite a few friends via Gmail or Yahoo! Mail. After that, it\u2019s that time to send out the first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Rants&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"picture-2","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.adam-jackson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/05\/picture-2.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":96,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/03\/09\/advertising-over-twitter-the-results\/","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":1},"title":"\u2605 Advertising Over Twitter: The Results","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"A month ago, I announced that a partnership between me and Snobby Slice Web Design was going to happen for 2 weeks. Here are the terms of the advertising agreement: Four Tweets every day. 9AM, 12Noon, 3PM, 6PM. Four different advertisements a day all mentioning SnobbySlice.com and @snobbyslice. Contract Was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Ideas&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Ideas","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"snobbystat","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.adam-jackson.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/03\/snobbystat.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":430,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/07\/20\/twitter-the-gateway-drug-to-social-networking\/","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":2},"title":"\u2605 Twitter: The Gateway Drug to Social Networking","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"July 20, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"When I began working on a project that taught Twitter to the masses, the service was still small with only a couple of celebrities and American mainstream media didn't know the definition of tweet. My project is still going strong but there was a phrase I coined that, \"Twitter is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Ideas&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Ideas","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":205,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/04\/08\/adage-tells-us-about-twitter-my-response\/","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":3},"title":"\u2605 AdAge Tells Us About Twitter &#038; My Response","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"April 8, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Today, I clicked through someone's tweet to a post on AdAge.com about Twitter. What intrigued me to click was the title. The post was called, \"Top 10 Reasons Your Company Probably Shouldn't Tweet\" and it was written by BL Ochman. To make things a bit easier, I've posted the ten\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Ideas&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Ideas","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/ideas\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":481,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2009\/08\/31\/twitter-pro-personal-business\/","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":4},"title":"\u2605 Twitter Pro: Personal &#038; Business","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"August 31, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Twitter is taking over the world. I just read this post from Robert Scoble that renewed my faith in the service and validated many of my previous thoughts on just how big it is getting not only in users but mindshare as well. That old question of monetizing the service\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;My Thoughts&quot;","block_context":{"text":"My Thoughts","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/my-thoughts\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6743,"url":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2017\/03\/24\/linked-twitter-explores-subscription-based-option-for-first-time\/","url_meta":{"origin":135,"position":5},"title":"Linked: &#8220;Twitter explores subscription-based option for first time&#8221;","author":"Adam Chandler","date":"March 24, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"via Reuters & Macrumors: Twitter is looking at providing a professional experience for people on TweetDeck that would pack in advance tools and features not found anywhere else on the service. The premium package would cost $19.99 per month, be accessible on both desktop and mobile, and include the following\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Linked&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Linked","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/category\/linked\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}