#FF2 – Follow Friday 2.0 on Twitter

I love Follow Friday, it’s a great way to add value to your network by suggesting quality feeds to your readers. Traditionally, you would just create a list of twitter user names of people that you found interesting, maybe a few words for context, and the hashtag #FF.

Here is an example of a properly formed #FF post:

@buffalogeek: Here’s a #Buffalo FF @susanlynncope @nickelcity @clarkdever @charlieriley @peteherr @buffawhat @mattbova @herobeth @nowbuffalo

The benefits of the traditional form of Follow Friday are these:

• Concise
• Easy to follow people directly from the tweet
• You tend to get retweeted as a Thank You from the people you list

The drawbacks that I see are the following:

• You don’t get to give much information about why you are listing them
• It’s a very ephemeral media to make a recommendation through
• It spams up the twitterstream all day and makes it more challenging to find good posts
• It doesn’t allow you to give them any link-love;  In-bound links are the currency of the internet.  If you really want to promote a friend or follower, a link to their website helps their google rank and their follower count.

With these issues in mind, I present to you my first; second-generation #FF post.

• @adriandayton – Had a great lunch with this man today, he tops the Twitter charts for Buffalo with over 50k followers.  He makes his living consulting and speaking on Social Media for Lawyers.
• @buffalogeek – Broke the Carl Paladino E-mail Scandal this week, spends equal time muckraking and nerding it up.  He is an anchor point in the Buffalo tech community and his political blog is a great read.
• @susanlynncope – My fiancee surprised me this week with her initiative to create TEDxBuffalo;  She strives to be a thought leader on how to integrate Social Media in to Event Planning.
• @kevinpurdy – Editor of one of my favorite blogs and a fellow Buffalonian.  His personal blog might not be as geeky as LifeHacker, but it’s still well worth the read.
• @karakane – Kara is in charge of Communications at Medaille College, she recently hired me for an event.  I was pleasantly surprised by her media savvy and her communications blog.
• @himay – Jamie is a biochemistry graduate student at the University of Buffalo, if you thought his hacking ended with GMOs; you’d be wrong.  This guy and his bacteria blog scare the crap out of me; I’m recommending you read him not only out of fear for humanity(someone needs to keep an on eye on this guy) but also for his great conversational skills and futurist interests.

So there you #FF 2.0 (#FF2).  I hope you enjoyed it and if you like the idea, feel free to steal it.  I’d love to see more in depth descriptions of peoples relationships with twitter and their community.