#followfriday The Twitter-based Endorsement System—not just for Fridays anymore
Micah Baldwin started a brilliant phenomena known as Follow Fridays. Follow Fridays has become the first Twitter-based endorsement system. Here is the premise, every Friday, endorse another tweetist by tweeting the hash “#followfriday” followed by tweetist reply tag. So the tweet “#followfriday @micah” results in the tweetist making an endorsement of @micah.
This is a good idea. As Scott Lemon recalls, Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) of Forrest research twittered something like “It would be interesting to see who the most recommended people are on #followfriday.” Another good idea. My good friend Scott Lemon (@humancell) jumped on the idea and proceeded to pump out the code over the weekend to do just that. Thus http://topfollowfriday.com was born. Topfollowfriday.com is a statistics engine that gathers stats on #followfriday. Sweet little implementation Scott! 
Scott called me up on Skype to tell me about his stat engine. We proceeded to have a little brainstorm about how to extend the #followfriday syntax. Without putting too much pressure on Scott to deliver, I will give you a hint. Drummond Reed (@drummondreed) was involved.
I love how this stuff happens.
So I will say it. You read it here first. Wouldn’t it be cool if besides giving an endorsement, you could give some “context” to the endorsement. I mean context like actually saying what the you are endorsing the person for in a format that can be searched and indexed? Hey, I know, let’s call it microtagging.
That’s it, a microtag-based endorsement system with classifications and ratings using standard syntax. Hmmmm. Now that’s a good idea.
Can it be abused? Probably. Good questions. I put this on my wiki, go make comments and suggestions. You can also make comments here of course.
The Advent of Microtagging
Wouldn’t be cool if instead of creating a syntax out of the blue for microtagging, we used an existing, vetted, well thought out syntax? Say maybe XRI? Thank you Drummond.
Hey, I’m not saying this has all happened yet. But what fun to think about and watch the beginnings.