Making Follow Fridays Work

I found this picture on Flickr under the heading:

“#Follow Friday - Please don't do this

Lists of people to follow have no added value on Twitter. People don't read them and it makes you look silly.”

Courtesy LilPecan, Flickr

Many Facebook users have, by now, dabbled in Twitter. These social networkers can normally be classified by two traits: 1) those who used it for a day, thought of it as a slimmed-down and largely pointless version of Facebook and didn't go back onto it, and 2) those who saw that there was a purpose to the site that differed from the purpose of Facebook. Facebook is for keeping in touch with your friends and showing them what you're doing with your life. Twitter is for sharing information with the world. It's for bringing people together who have similar interests. Where Facebook displays what has happened, Twitter shares what is happening. When Facebook is being reactive, Twitter is being proactive. In short, Twitter is for people who believe they have something to say that's worth listening to, something that can affect people.

In January 2009, the “Follow Friday” trend emerged. The #ff hashtag burst onto our newsfeeds, and occasionally onto our Mentions page. Essentially, the #ff tag is for people the tweeter thinks their followers should also be following. It's a bit of ego-stroking for those mentioned, basically. For more info on Follow Fridays, see Mashable's (now slightly dated) write-up. 

I've seen a few people's tweets criticising the #ff trend, saying that such mentions haven't gotten them any new followers. And they're right. I'm not aware that any of my followers started following me because of an #ff tweet.

I think the thing missing from these particular Friday-themed tweets is a REASON for us to follow the people mentioned. I always wonder, who are they? And why should I follow them? Now, with only 140 characters per tweet to spare, we would have to change the face of Follow Fridays somewhat to make them more effective. Here's what I propose we tweeters do: let's not pack our tweets with mentions buffered with the #ff hashtag. Instead, why not include one mention per tweet, complete with the hashtag and a description of the mentioned account or, to coin a phrase, a “follow reason”. So I might- for instance- tweet “#ff @Mashablesocialmedia for the latest info on the internet and social media.” That's more tempting, right? It would take a bit of time to write out the tweets, and a bit more time for the trend (the, er, trend of doing the trend differently) to take off, but am I right in thinking this is something that could work for people worldwide?