Friends versus Followers: Twitter’s elegant design for groupi...
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Saved by 8 people (-1 private), first by anonymouse user on 2009-03-16
- Imjustcreative on 2009-03-19 - Tags no_tag
- Tedlouie on 2009-03-18 - Tags no_tag
- Ignitesrini on 2009-03-17 - Tags twitter , andrew_chen , friends , followers , print , discuss , swarna
- Leohavemann on 2009-03-17 - Tags twitter , socialnetworking , friending , following
- Joel on 2009-03-17 - Tags twitter , follow , friends
Public Sticky notes
This post examines the strengths of the one-way “follow” design, in particular, the ability for this paradigm to support 4-tiers of relationships rather than the simple 2-tiered model in the classic friends case.
The amazing thing about Twitter’s model of allowing one-way following is that it adds depth and a couple simple segmentations to your friend list, without needing to do any configuration beyond hitting a button.
With the one-way follow design, you have:
1. People who follow you, but you don’t follow back
2. People who don’t follow you, but you follow them
3. You both follow each other (Friends!)
4. Neither of you follow each other
Having these 4-tiers of relationships on Twitter is nice - combined with Protected Updates, it creates a nuanced set of definitions, executed with just one button: Follow.
Highlighted by grlloyd
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