#FollowFriday. A Twitter Trend.

June 4th, 2009 Posted by Missie at 7:25 pm

Follow Friday has become a cult phenomenon on twitter, with every Friday around the world seeing up to two tweets a second containing those that #followfriday text.

Follow Friday began in late 2008 when Micah Baldwin became obsessed with the idea that Google doesn’t have the one right answer instead, believing that each blogger could answer the questions he wanted to answered on twitter.

The idea behind FollowFriday is to think of interesting people you already follow and recommend them to other twitter users via one tweet. It meets the thoughts and needs of all twitter users. What if you don’t know who to follow on twitter? Would you follow others you see mentioned in tweets? 

FollowFriday allows for your friends you trust to suggest cool people to follow and eliminated the need to start randomly following people on twitter.

FollowFriday then evolved into using the # hashtag to help spread the use on twitter. But some we’re sceptical, would this be a fad that lasted a week? By the following Friday, #FollowFriday tweets began popping up all over twitter and spreading across the world, appearing in foreign languages.

One idea has sparked a continuing trend that shows what the power of a tweet can really do. #Followfridays has morphed into other trending topics, including #WoofWednesday and #MusicMondays that have spread across the world to twitter users.

#FollowFriday just works

#FollowFriday has become such a success and works on basic interactivity principals, engaging tweeters to follow the trend and tweet their own.It’s easy, simple and takes little effort by the tweeter to do and it’s participatory and has an open invitation to involve all twitter users.

What’s next?

#FollowFriday, #WoofWednesday and others like #MusicMonday has proven to be a lasting trend on twitter. These tweets allow users to interact with others and share their own friends and followers on twitter. Although it seems to be over utilised use of search and tweets which may impact on how trusted the recommendations can be, the use of #concepts that meet those basic tweeting principals of simplicity and user participation will continue to evolve and grow as twitter grows with popularity and technology.