ResearchGoddess

I haven’t seen TechCrunch or Mashable cover the quiet release of www.followfriday.com yet, so I’m not quite sure if that means it’s not newsworthy. Either way, I think it will be interesting for anyone who likes to participate in Follow Fridays on Twitter.

So, a little history here to begin: apparently, last year a website called www.followfridays.com was launched to help people manage their #FF’s and see who the most #FF’ed individuals are. Clicking on that URL today brings you to a web hosting site called ‘(mt) Media Temple’. So I guess it’s been shut down. I heard whisperings of Twitter incorporating something to officially recognize #FFs, but I have yet to see anything leaked, tweeted, or scooped on that. Then, this afternoon, I received an email from Alfredo Artiles of www.e24apps.com – the company that also launched LocaFollow which I highlighted in my post on tools for searching Twitter profiles. He said:

I am releasing http://www.followfriday.com, which is a world Twitter ranking of the most recommended tweeps based on the #followfriday recommendations. The app is a Twitter ranking but also a Twitter directory and a recommendations management tool where you can check who recommends you, who you have recommended and automatically thank all of them or create Twitter lists in only a couple of clicks.

I do receive press releases from time to time, most of which are not relevant to the things I write about on my blog. But this sounded kind of cool, plus Alfredo referenced my specific blog post where I mentioned LocaFollow, so I knew his outreach to me was personal. I started looking around to see how long ago this site had launched and didn’t see anyone else talking about it. So I wrote back to Alfredo and asked him if any of the big social media sites had written about it – he responded that he had not received any word from them. I continued sniffing around still unconvered nothing. I wrote back to Alfredo to get some more details, and he said they launched last week, but just to Spanish-speaking audiences.

Oh. My. Gosh. You’re hearing about www.followfriday.com here FIRST Well, at least if you don’t live in Spain.

So, best I can tell is that FollowFriday.com is a way for you to quickly read about and follow other Twitter accounts that are being recommended for #FF. Naturally, having also created LocaFollow, the site creators used a lot of the same bulk action tools to allow you to follow multiple Twitter accounts at the same time. You can also view rankings in hundreds of countries, break them out by languages, even see who amongst the Verified Accounts (read: celebrities and cewebrities) is ranked. You can search for specific Twitter accounts (but not keywords), and from there you can recommend people for #FF, see who has recommended you or another Twitter account, and create new Twitter lists of those who’ve made the recommendation.

So far, I’m not seeing some search and/or sorting functionality that would make this a more valuable sourcing tool – things like location, profession, or interest categories or keyword searches. I like the quick follow functions, and it’s neat to see the names of people who’ve recommended someone. Birds of a feather often flock together so if there is a well-known Twitter account in a specific profession, chances are those who recommend that individual might also work in that profession – the list-builder would be good in this case.

Overall, I’ll give this tool a ‘C’. It has some neat stuff with a lot of potential, but the search capability just isn’t there yet. I like to be able to explore things myself rather than having the information spoon-fed to me. But that’s just me. If you’re using Twitter simply for the numbers, this site the way it is now will be a great resource for you. But I’m anxious to see them build out some more robust search capability. However, check it out and form your own opinions! And make sure to say hello to me while you’re there

Happy #FF to you!

Tags: #FF, FollowFriday, locafollow, mashable, Techcrunch, Twitter

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