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Arrington Calls For Fake Follow on Twitter

Arrington Calls For Fake Follow on Twitter

Michael Arrington calls for a Fake Follow feature on Twitter, and similar on FriendFeed for that matter, so that he can stroke people’s egos. What? I actually makes sense:

[…] there are a lot of people who for some reason are greatly offended when you don’t reciprocate a follow/subscribe on Twitter or FriendFeed. When this happens (and it happens a lot), you have a choice – deal with the fallout (”that guy is such a jerk”) or just friend the person and avoid the pain.

I’ve had some of those myself, and I think Arrington i pretty spot on with the need for a less friendly follow on Twitter. It just becomes too much to handle, both for yourself and, I suspect, for Twitter when you’ve got 300+ followers. Or wherever, it probably depends on who you follow too. The story notes that Twitter “might” adopt something like this, and FriendFeed’s got features coming out to cope with it.

View Comments (8)
  • While I think I understand the drive behind wanting this feature, I don’t think it’s the answer. I mean, the problem is that people don’t know how to handle the idea that someone may not want to follow them. As bloggers/leaders we can (and, I think, should) offer up an explanation as to why the follow didn’t happen, and be kind about it, for sure. But giving a halfway point isn’t solving the real problem in the situation.

    I suppose I’m drawn this direction because I like to see problems fixed instead of worked-around. And, when it comes to using these platforms myself, I don’t like how that clouds the other side of my interaction. When it says that someone has followed me, I want to know what that means. I don’t want to have to do mental jumping jacks to try and figure out whether the person really friended me or not.

    Thanks for the heads up. I can’t bear to read much TechCrunch anymore, so it’s nice to have the crazy stuff mentioned elsewhere, so I don’t miss out.

  • It is an interesting sounding idea but I don’t agree with it, I think what would make more sense is just for FriendFeed and Twitter to just wait it out until the users start to realize that it isn’t a big deal if someone doesn’t follow you back. And, don’t forget that if you use Twitter on your cell phone most of the time you can follow someone but not receive device updates from them.

  • That’s totally absurd. Don’t effing use social media if you can’t/won’t follow the rules. It’s ABOUT making connections. If you can’t figure out how to deal with the situation when you don’t reciprocate, you shouldn’t bother using it.

    Robert Scoble has no problem following thousands of people. Why is Arrington so special that he needs a fake follow?

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