Giving Good Loving To My Top Follow Friday People

by Jan Geronimo on September 25, 2009

followfriday

Follow Friday list in Twitter is a great meme.  It’s a wonderful occasion to pay back the many kindnesses, generosity, and all-around helpfulness of people. They are practically strangers to you in the traditional sense, but they keep you company like a true friend and share with you their precious time and knowledge.

But giving your follow Friday recommendation in Twitter sucks.  To give a coherent shout-out you need to limit your top pick to one or two persons per tweet.  Go beyond that number and you’d have nothing but a  roll call of names.  Truly exasperating.

You mean well by it, but to be honest I am not moved if you dump me with eight or 10 other people in a single tweet.  I’d rather you ignore the meme and just talk with me about what’s up with you today.  That’s more satisfying.

If you can write a coherent recommendation in 140-character, fine.  Congratulations.  I’d rather write it here on my blog instead where I don’t need to truncate my sentiments.

My recommendation, however, is not a definitive list.  If you feel I’ve left you out, tell me.  If you’ve engaged me in meaningful – and even inane – conversations, gave me links to help me grow a brain, and generally made me feel like a rock star, why, you’re a shoo-in.

Here are my top recommendations with a link to their recent post.

Top conversationalists

Cool Writers

Jedi Bloggers and Friends Who “Get” Twitter

Who are the top Twitter people in your list?  How do you give #followfriday love to them?

Photo by Ilse

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Tagged as: followfriday, top picks in Twitter

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  • zorlone
    Where have I been all this time?!? Oh yeah, I was stranded, got back, and got busy, but I'm here again. hehehe.

    I got a weird pingback, but ignored it. Yikes! When I traced it, it wasn't from writingtoexhale! Some other website.

    I better start following these cool people.

    Z
  • Did you leave a comment on that scraper's blog. An uber blogger friend of mine did! It was funny he did not notice it was scraped from my blog. But Ditesco had given the owner an ultimatum and he took it down.

    You're still having headaches, Doc Z? ... Oh, I meant to ask you this, but I always forgot. Can you put subscribe to comment plugin in your blog? It's hard to follow up on conversations there now that you got fed up with Echol. ",)
  • zorlone
    Nope, I did not leave a comment on that blog. I almost did. he he he.

    BTW, I have been wanting to do that. Primary reason why I wanted to redo my
    theme. I have been looking for one that would solve all my problems. Don't
    worry, will let you know when I successfully solve that trivial problem.

    Oh, and my headaches disappeared Monday, but the blues came in. LOL (Monday
    blues) okay corny.

    Z
  • I just wanted to say that I totally dig this idea just a bit more than Follow-Friday (not to say that FF is bad or anything). I just like that you've taken it a step further in this case...
  • And this is more permanent unlike the Twitter time line. Tweets get easily
    swept away like so much debris in the great surging river that is the
    Twitter time line. Thanks for dropping by. ",)
  • Hi LJ! Thanks for including me despite my long absence. Will write about the flood and what we went through soon. Therapy na rin for me.

    Thanks again!
  • That would be something to look forward to ReyJr. Right, Jan?
  • @Rey: You're a natural writer - how can I miss including you in my fine list? No way.

    @Jen: If Rey doesn't want me digging up in his archive, he'd better deliver on this promise. Ahehehe
  • Ahaha. Eto na po. Ive posted my story.
    :)
    Traumatized pa rin but not as much as before. :)
  • Thanks for including me on this wonderful list. I appreciate it very much. :)
  • Well, deserved, MJ. You're welcome. ",)
  • Thanks for the link love. :)
  • It's my way of saying hi. ",)
  • I am not much into the Follow Friday thing honestly coz as you know I have very limited access to Twitter, but whenever lady luck is on my side, and you guys sent me a copy of great people to follow, I make it a point to follow these peepz on Twitter.

    Hmmm...people I follow on Twitter? Ah, that guy who told me to stop what I was tweeting. Hahhaha!
  • Well, bro, you need to check who's promoting you in #followfriday to give
    thanks if they're not spammers. It's a nice way of discovering new and cool
    people to follow.
  • I agree! I just say hi and thanks to all those who included my list on their Follow Friday :D

    Hey, Jaypee is here :D
  • I belong to twitter but have a problem finding it very engaging. I can't twitter during work and I get a lot of junk twitters or "I'm about to read a book...take a dump...eat something..." type of tweets. It's hard to swim through all the mess. I like what you've done here though.
  • Thanks! ",) TweetDeck and Hootsuite both have filtering functions. You
    can group people whose tweets you absolutely need to see. Maybe you call it
    your Close Friends. That way you filter out the noise, spam tweets.
  • Thanks for including me on your list!
  • Just between you and me? You're the only one from the Retweet Club that
    made it to the list - so far. For whatever it's worth. Sssssh. :)
  • Lol, I'll keep that one to myself, but I'm celebrating inside ^_-
  • jan,
    It doesnt matter if twitter or blog as long as both informational .
    Thank you for the comment.

    Regards sa mga jedai Bloggers.
  • You sound very formal, my friend. My blog is giving you problems again?
    I'd check with the security guard. You can climb over the kitchen window
    and nobody should stop you - is all I'm saying. This is getting ridiculous.
    ",)
  • Hi Jan! Thanks for including me in your list. Well, I'm not that into twitter, I just peak whenever I felt the need to, or whenever I wanted to read interesting blogs from the JediBloggers. In the first place, it was Jhong who suggested me to be a Twitter-holic :)

    But, I don't really do #FollowFriday meme. I just log in to twitter and read on interesting links :)
  • I know that! I leave a comment on a blog, the author replies, I go back. And there's your comment. Sometimes next to the one I've left. You're just a step behind. Makes me really pick just the choice links to tweet. Don't want to disappoint you and others who really check them out. ",)
  • Hey Jan! Haven't you had another urge to write a Follow Friday?
  • It's been a while no? Okay, I'll see what I can do. :)
  • Yes Jan. What's taking you so long? Aside from I admire the way you write,
    I also admire your choice of pictures :)
  • Because I need a brain upgrade? :) Thanks, Madz.
  • You can have mine Jan. Slightly used, LOL!
  • Aba, wala pang wear and tear yan. Great! Ahahaha
  • Wow thanks Jan! I'm flattered to be included in such great company!
  • Is that a whisper or a shout-out? ",) You're welcome, Tracy. It's a pleasure to link to your powerful post. I'm sure there are more where it came from.
  • Waaaaaaaaaaaaaa! oo nga no!?!? eto pala yung orig! wah! sorry jan di ko napansin. Nauna kasi yung track back ng scraper blog. Yun yung unang ping na natanggap ko. Kaya nag comment agad ako doon. weird. hahah! pinlurk ko pa nga yun. Delete ko nalang pati track back nya sa naliligaw.com delete ko na din. waaaaaaaaaaa!
  • OMG. I didn't see this comment was still in moderation... Hey, no problem, Jehz. Sure, I got mad my post was scraped. But your comment there made me laugh and take it all in stride. The scraper deleted the post by the way. ",)
  • hahaha! natawa nga din ako sa comment ko. halatang di ako nag babasa :P
  • Don't worry, this is just between you and me. Unless of course wala na
    akong maikwento sa blog ko. LOL. Di ba nabasa super duper state of the art
    gadgets mo sa bahay? I hope everything is fine with you. ",)
  • Thank you for mentioning me Jan. It's an honor to be associated with the folks you put in your cool writer category!
  • Only because you deserve it, Fred. Anytime, sir. ",)
  • Jan,

    You are one of the most generous bloggers I know. Always handing out link love like a Krishna on an airport concourse.

    It's a pleasure to hang out with you.

    George
  • That's a powerful image. Now I can't get it out of my mind. LOL
  • Or a real estate agent in an SM Supermall?

    lol!
  • Yay. No offense, but I always give them the evil eye just to be sure I'd not be inconvenienced. ",)
  • Hi Jan. Damn you for giving me so many great people to follow:) Do you like giving me "homeworks"? And I thought I was done going to school, lol. Just kidding.

    Anyway, thank you very much about the mention. Also, I can not stop but think who the hell scraped your content? Care to give me a hint, I'll take of that person for you, hehe..

    You are so right about #FF that I was close to start my #NOFF (No Follow Friday) movement. People were just slapping my face with that thing that I really didn't bother for the past two weeks. This post however made me rethink my position and will act on it.. Will go to my Weekly Echo later on today. Be on the look out, lol
  • There were three of them. The first two copied the lead paragraphs, but then pointed a link to my blog. You know the drill, "Read the whole post here..." Which is okay, at least it's something like a digest or a teaser of my post. I got a link back. I didn't approve the trackback by the way. :) But the third one was something else. From the title of the post, the picture I searched in Flickr, practically the whole post. I was alerted because the scraper included Related Posts, which of course pointed to my blog. LOL!

    The next #followfriday post will be a lot leaner. I'd limit linking to those who'd actively engage me in Twitter for the previous week. That's a good incentive, right? Makes everyone to be on their best behavior. Ahehehe.
  • Indeed a very good incentive. I like the idea of recommending only people that you have actually engaged with.

    As far as your post being "stolen", are you interested in doing a DMCA?

    BTW, check out my latest "Weekly Echo"..
  • Jan. Figured out for myself where that scrapper is (would not be an SEO Master if I didn't, hehe). Left a comment there, check it out too:) Man so many checking out's huh:)
  • You did? I was itching to mock him/her online, but I guess I might just be
    driving precious traffic to his spammy site so I held back. Yeah, your SEO
    smarts is in full display now. :)
  • I might - will check out Holly's post about that. ",) Ah, so we have a new
    edition of Echo today. Okay, checking it out now...
  • JD
    Your blog is so damn good that someone scrapd this post... ^^
  • Yeah, I know. We're both showing up on Google search back to back! Darn. I
    labored for hours compiling links for this post and that scraper - with
    just one click, he got it published on his darn blog from title, to pic,
    everything. I bet he has set up his blog to auto-publish things he's
    subscribed to. Jesus.

    How did you know by the way?
  • Wow, someone has actually copied your post! Wow, you are now a superstar bro, wahahah!
  • Bro, it's a sucky feeling getting plagiarized. Really felt bad about it.
    And I have a feeling superstar or not - we'd be victimized one way or
    another. We had better know what steps to take and protect our rights as
    bloggers.
  • Hello Jan,

    Thanks for the mention. I would still post my #FF but only those I truly read and follow. That's why I only have around 2o plus. Yours is an enterprising idea, the first of its kind I read so far. What do you expect from the Jan Geronimo himself?


    Way to go.
  • Yeah, that's a good standard. If they're on your Reader then they must be doing really good. Otherwise they'd not be there, right? Just like all these people - they're here because I read them all.

    Of course, some aren't here. And those are the shrinking violets. LOL. And big time writers who don't engage with me on Twitter.
  • I've been on twitter long time... since 200& I think... never really figured it out! Time to bite the bullet.
  • I'm sure you'd find something useful with Twitter to make it worth your time. :)
  • Roy
    Thanks for the FF Jan! It's 5am. I'm up early, trying to make up for the lost time last night. I hope you're fine now.

  • Yeah, blame it all on Typhoon Ondoy. What a wet rag this Ondoy... I'm okay now. Slept a lot, took some meds, and wallah - feel better now. :)
  • Thank you for including me in your FF list, I was following most of these fine people already, but now I am following everyone on the list except one who had their updates protected.
  • Yeah, that's rather strange - putting someone up there with protected updates. I'd edit my list. Didn't know she changed her privacy settings. :) Thanks for pointing it out to me.
  • Ah there you go again, giving acknowledgement to others in such a grand way. I am honoured you would acknowledge me for those traits within in such a prestigous list.
    I am inspired by your inclusive nature, and the manner in which you nurture others success.
  • Ah, it's my grand way of weaseling out of the "obligatory" #followfriday thing in Twitter. A post is more permanent while a tweet gets easily buried in the time line.
  • Gem
    Thanks for including me in your top conversationalists. I was about to retweet this post (as a gratitude) as well as some other interesting posts I'm seeing, but at this time I'm lending my Twitter timeline to those who need help (that is, the poor victims of Typhoon Ondoy), so I'm leaving a comment here and a hi. :-)
  • You're welcome, Gem. :)
  • Jan, Thank you for including me in this spectacular list. Now I have a whole bunch of new people I hope to connect with!
  • This is long overdue and no doubt inspired by your post on the same subject quite a while back. @joannayoung had a similar post, too, right?

    It took a while. I had to get the Apture plugin first - again, inspired by your example.

    So you see, you're the Pied Piper. I march to the beat of your beautiful music. :)
  • I was surprised in a delightful way to see my post under your above Recommended Reading section along with blogs from great minds like Mashable, ExtremeJohn and DailyBlogTips. Thanks for the honor and making em blush! :P And yes, I almost forgot to mention - you have got a very nice blog here. ;)
  • Your post resonates with me. It adds value to the topic. And that's why I didn't hesitate to point my readers to your well-written post. :)
  • Hi Jan,

    What a great list of links. I agree. Follow Friday is a good concept on Twitter, but like you say, the links can easily get lost. Several times I've posted, "If you want to follow good peeps, just follow everyone I tweet with". Another time I did individual tweets for everyone and their blog, but don't know if that helped their traffic or not.

    Thank you for including me in you list of link. I am humbled and honored.
  • #FollowFriday lists in Twitter have short shelf-life. As these are retweeted it's all right it's getting eyeballs. And I've read too that Twitter only keeps a database of tweets for only X number of months. After that, and unless you've downloaded a copy of your own tweets, these are gone.

    Oops, I got it wrong about the short shelf life of tweets. Just read from Louis Gray's shared item in Reader that Twitter after all is saving all our tweets in its database.

    I'm sure a lot of people have referenced your recommendations, Barbara. Chalk it up to credibility. If you're using Hootsuite, it has statistics - so you can check the click-throughs in your tweets and all sorts of metrics. :)

    Anytime, Barbara. It's my pleasure. :)
  • Hi Jan,

    I think I found my name here! Thanks for the link . I love you Jan, Muah! Hehehehe!
    I owe you bro! I will cherish this every moment and every letter in this post!

    Kidding aside bro! Thanks!

  • You're welcome, Jhong. :)
  • MountainDreamer
    Well, thank you for the shout. I must say I'm impressed with your idea. I think it's a great way to recommend people, without clogging the time line. Many times on a Friday I don't pay much attention to twitter because of the mass #FF's. I like to recommend people I know or my blog buddies. I think I may start doing it individually with a reason, or I may just follow your lead and do a blog post.
  • Yeah, I find it so stressful I make myself scarce on Friday night. Well, if I know the tweeter and he or she has no history of being spammy, I find it easy to retweet the stuff out there. Otherwise, I'd tweet a few and stay away.

    But there are people who just list @usernames in order to plump up their followers and I hate that tack. Thanks, Eric. :)
  • Thanks lolo Jan for the love. It's really a pleasure to be part of your Top Conversationalist list. :D I'll strive to tweet with more quality and of value. :)

    Hope your having a great rainy Saturday today. God Bless!
  • Wow, super fast. You're on the ball, Jed. You're welcome. Anytime! :)
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