On Twitter, you see it every Friday, people cramming other peoples names into a tweet. The tweet doesn't say anything other than a list of names and a hashtag (#FF or #FollowFriday)...


#FollowFriday used to be a way for people to recommend other people that you should follow, largely because they have good things to tweet, either useful, funny, intelligent.

But now it's not like that anymore. Now, it's just gratuitous link love.

Today, if someone has some valuable followers, they tweet them in a #FollowFriday just as a way of pointing their finger at them in approval. And why do I really care who your buddies are? Why do I want to know?

In the past it was kinda cool to see someone send out a tweet saying, "Hey everyone, check out this guy and follow him, he tweets some really good stuff". But today, #FollowFriday is just buddies high-fiving each other.

And then, they high-five the same buddies every single Friday, and often do it several times in that day.

People say that #FollowFriday is a great way to strengthen relationships with your most valuable followers. But that's just a way a nice way to justify spamming. And I think that's what #FollowFriday has become, spam.

High-fiving each other wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to see it, but as it is this stuff shows up on everyone else's wall. And if you want to unfollow me for saying that, well I don't make a business practice of needing Twitter so it doesn't matter.

If #FollowFriday was still what it used to be, I wouldn't write this post. But come on and admit it, seeing tweets like that?  ✓