Project #followeveryday - Some Thoughts and Observations

Well, it's now been one week since the start of Project Follow Everyday. It's been an interesting seven days. While there were many tweets that used the #followeveryday hashtag, I could only find two tweets that offered recommendations in the style suggested in my blog post of last Friday. Below are screen captures of those two tweets. By the time this post goes live, there well may be more posts but below are the two I found:

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As a reminder, the original idea was to post the name of one Twitter user and reasons why you should follow this person and include the hashtag #followeveryday to differentiate it from the well known tradition of #followfriday. The point here being is that each recommendation is a sincere and personal testimony as to why you should follow the person you recommend. For each of the last seven days, I posted one #followeveryday recommendation and a few words describing why I recommended that person and why you should follow their updates. Each person is special in their own way and all are brilliant, engaging, generous and just great people.

I also saw on person that had a different opinion of #followeveryday which are contained in the screen capture below:

As you can see, the beauty of Twitter is that everyone has a voice and can freely express their opinion. I respect anyone who is willing to put themselves out there and contribute to the debate regardless of the topic or cause or whether you agree or disagree. This is one of the many positve and useful aspects of social media that intrigues me and keeps me engaged.

In the coming weeks, I will be continuing this new tradition of posting #followeveryday recommendations from time to time. I am fortunate to know many authentic and wonderful people I have met through Twitter and will be posting more recommendations describing why you should follow their updates. I will limit these posts to no more than one person per day, but not necessarily everyday. I'd like to make each recommendation sincere, authentic and individual to highlight each persons special qualities and why you should follow them. While I suspect the tradition of #followfriday will continue unabated, I prefer to take a different approach on the popular weekly tradition. I invite your comments and feedback.

Posted via email from Marty McPadden

Project "Follow Everyday"

As most people who post on Twitter know, today is Friday and commonly known on Twitter as #followfriday. It is a tradition started some time ago to take time out and recommend people to follow on Twitter. While starting out with the best of intentions and sincerity, for me #followfriday has become much less about real recommendations and more about pure numbers and how many retweets your can post of other #followfriday posts. It is bordering on spam and has really lost much of its luster for me.

To attempt to regain the original intent of #followfriday, I am starting a week long project called "Follow Everyday." For the next seven days, I will be posting the name of one Twitter user and reasons why you should follow this person. I will also be including the hashtag #followeveryday with each recommendation. The point here being is that each recommendation is a sincere and personal testimony as to why you should follow the person you recommend everyday. Each day I will recommend another individual and tell you why you should follow their updates. At the end of seven days, I will post an update to this article and include any comments or feedback I receive during the week.

I invite everyone to join me in this project. Please use the hashtag #followeveryday if you decide to participate so I can find your posts and include them in my update next week. If the response is favorable, I will adopt this new tradition permanently going forward. So, what do you think of this idea?  I would love to read your comments and feedback. You can either post comments here or reply to me on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/marty0518

My first #followeveryday goes out to my best friend @NongLing. Here is a link to the Twitter post: http://twitter.com/marty0518/status/3452730406

Posted via email from Marty McPadden

A New Take on #FollowFriday

The tradition of sending out recommendations to follow certain people on Twitter every Friday (also known as FollowFriday,) has been around for some time now. While the original intention of Follow Friday was noble, lately it seems to have lost some of its original meaning. Instead of posting a couple of recommendations with specific reasons why you should follow, many Follow Friday recommendations are simply long lists of seemingly random Twitter IDs and bunches of retweets of similar lists. To me, this borders on spam instead of genuine recommendations.

Since follow recommendations should be based on real experiences with people you interact and engage with, I propose the #followfriday hashtag and tradition be replaced with the hashtag #followeveryday and that follow recommendations be limited to one person per tweet. Instead of just posting follow recommendations on Fridays, use the #followeveryday hashtag and post one sincere and genuine recommendation everyday. That way, each follow recommendation stands alone and doesn't get lost in the sea of endless lists and retweeted lists. You certainly don't have to post #followeveryday recommendations everyday, I'm just saying they should be limited to one per day.

What do you think? Has Follow Friday lost it's luster? I invite your comments.

Posted via email from Marty McPadden