Jesse Pickard's Thoughtstream

» An Evolving Cultural Curiosity: We Need A Fake Follow - Uh...no we don't

Michael Arrington says Twitter (and Friendfeed) needs a fake follow. What is a fake follow? “The Fake Follow looks like a normal follow to the other person, but to me it’s like I didn’t follow them at all. This solves the ego stroking issue (and related problems) that so many people have, and it keeps the content stream clean and usable.”

I think this is a terrible idea. When Twitter says that someone is following me, I consider them an audience for my tweets. I will then write tweets based on the audience I think is listening to me. I lose confidence in the Twitter service if I think some of those people are fake following me. Maybe I assume most of my audience is fake following me and I don’t think my tweets are worth sending. The fake follow brings an unwanted element of deception into Twitter that will cause many problems.

Social technologies should always be as transparent and authentic as possible. The same goes for social media marketing.