There’s a buzz on Twitter this morning that an attempt has been made on the life of #FollowFriday (see staynalive.com/articles/2009/05/12/did-twitter-just-kill-followfriday/)
#FollowFriday is the practice of suggesting Tweeters that your friends may like to check out. But Twitter have changed a rule which means that posts which begin with a “@name” where the Twitterer named is not on your own Friends’ List will not be displayed to the wider world.
This, say the panickers, means the end of #FollowFriday because you won’t be able to suggest people you don’t know.
Thing is, I’ve yet to see a #FollowFriday post which begins “@name”; don’t they normally begin “#FollowFriday” … ?
In fact, according to the Twitter press release, even if you put a “space” at the beginning of the post you can get around the so-called block.
And actually, isn’t #FollowFriday meant to be about recommending people you know to other people you know, not trawling the searches to find names to suggest because it makes you look cool?
This shows one of the limitations (and joys) of Twitter: 140 characters is easily enough to get your message across and completely screw any meaning that message may contain.
And in these unfathomably nervous times, we’re all quite prepared to get outraged and unreasonable about almost anything — from #FollowFriday to Swine Flu — even if there’s little to worry about in the first place!