#FollowFriday: What is it and why do we love it so much?

#FollowFriday, or #FF if you’re short for space, has become a pretty standard and widespread convention on Twitter.

Some people use it a little differently to others, cramming all of their favourite people into a number of tweets or just writing a long list of compliments about that special someone.

But where did it all begin? And why every week without fail on a Friday morning do so many of us include it in our tweets?

According to Mashable, the convention began back in 2009 with just a solitary tweet from @micah:

Twitter Follow Friday

Of course it helped that Micah had a lot of followers, that Follow Friday rolls so nicely off the tongue AND that it’s just plain nice (and not at all schmoozy).

And there you have it. A convention was born.

There are a few reasons why it’s stuck and more and more people use it every week:

1. It’s useful because you click on the links your network pump out everyday because you know there’s a good chance you’ll be interested in them and this works the same for recommendations of people too. Often they ARE people that are worth following.

2. It’s easy, just type #ff and a username.

3. It’s nice to be nice.

However, we shouldn’t go thinking that it’s TOO easy, after all some people get pretty angry if you don’t use the #FF correctly (yes these people have too much time on their hands) so here’s a quick rundown of #FollowFriday etiquette, which you can take or leave really it’s only Twitter after all:

1. Give a reason why you’re nominating people for #FF. Now this isn’t really necessary in my opinion, but it’s true that more people are likely to actually follow the people you recommend if you say why they’re so brilliant.

2. Don’t retweet Follow Fridays that people have included you in unless there’s a VERY good reason for it. After all we’re living in a society where to be proud of yourself and a little arrogant is very much frowned upon. Hate yourself like the rest of us.

3. Don’t include the same people every week. Well unless they’re REALLY amazing.

Becca Caddy