It’s Friday, which can mean only one thing: across the Twitterverse, people are recommending other people to follow using the hashtag #followfriday. For those new to Twitter, hashtags can be confusing. #followfriday is the most prolific of these, and a good one to start with, not least because it can help you to find interesting people to follow.

What are hashtags?

Hashtags are simply a way to group tweets together by topic. They are a keyword, or words (with no spaces), and start with the # symbol. You don’t need to register them anywhere – you just make them up. By using the # symbol, they become clickable links. Click on a hashtag and you will see everyone’s tweets containing that hashtag as a list updated in real time. Click on this one to see what this looks like: #followfriday

The most popular show up in the ‘trending topics’ list in the right-hand column of your Twitter page. Trending topics may or may not include the # symbol.

So what is #followfriday?

‘Following’ on Twitter is like ‘friending’ on other social networks, except you usually don’t need to get your follow request approved – unless someone has protected their tweets. You just click the ‘follow’ button on their Twitter profile, and their tweets will show up in the timeline on your page.

#followfriday is a little game that Twitterers play on a Friday. It’s a way of recommending interesting people to follow. It can also be a way of finding people to follow (especially if you’re new to Twitter), and for building your followers if your friends think you’re interesting enough to recommend!

Other alliterative variations take place on other days of the week:

• #musicmonday for recommending music
• #charitytuesday for recommending – you guessed it – charities.

Other days are more or less up for grabs, if you want to have a go at starting your own trend. Various attempts at this have been made, including #woofwednesday for following pets. I know.

How to #followfriday

Don’t just recommend your mates – at least not without a reason. #followfriday works best when you list a few people, and give a reason, or group them by the type of Tweeters they are. That way people can decide if your recommendations look of interest to them, without having to click through to the accounts of those people first to find out what they tweet about. One of the downsides to Twitter is that it’s just so vast – where do you start to find people to follow? #followfriday is a way of using your network to filter through the great unwashed mass of information on Twitter.

Here are a couple of examples from my recent past:

So now you know how to #followfriday, get following, recommending and tweeting!

Tell your children! Social networking causes brain damage and autism! Increases risk of cancer! Leads to loss of identity! Watch what actually happens when their brains are rewired! See how social networks result in suicide!

Yes, over the weekend more Reefer Madness style moral panic about social networks broke loose. This week’s contender for the Susan Greenfield Award for Utter Nonsense Talked about Social Networks was Archbishop Vincent Nichols, head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. He suggested that Facebook and MySpace can lead children to commit suicide. And he’s not alone in making such wild, unfounded claims.

In February, we had Professor Greenfield’s speculation in the Daily Mail that social networking sites harm children’s brains and may lead to autism. Also that month, Dr Aric Sigman stuck his own tabloid oar in, with fears that Facebook may cause cancer.

Both were roundly criticised by Dr Ben Goldacre on Newsnight, who argued that “this is Baroness Greenfield unfortunately abusing her position in order to give extra weight to conjecture and opinion”. Her piece on Newsnight looks less like a contribution to rational scientific debate, and more like a hoodwinked celeb on a Chris Morris show – specifically Neil Fox’s statement on the spoof current affairs series Brass Eye that “there’s no real evidence for it, but it is scientific fact“. The Baroness almost delivers that line verbatim.

Now the church is weighing into the debate too, with assumption, speculation, conjecture and fear – but without actual evidence. What’s going on here?

This doesn’t seem much different to any previous technology-based moral panic, whether about television, cars or the telephone. Technology itself is neutral – nuclear fission may be used to create bombs or energy. The impact technology has on society is a complex, fascinating topic – and one worthy of research rather than tabloid speculation.

When public figures  make alarmist pronouncements on social media they neither understand nor use, they contribute little to public understanding. It’s fashionable in some quarters to rejoice in one’s own bewilderment about social media. Radio 4 is my favourite organ of ignorance in the UK, from arched-eyebrowed interviews  on the Today programme that just stop short of including the word ‘new-fangled’, to Will Self on Any Questions saying “the only way I would twitter is if a songbird flew into my mouth” – to squeals of delight from the audience, one of whom ‘admitted’ to using Twitter. But when such ignorance becomes judgemental warning, there’s something wrong.

Social networking sites are neither a Good Thing nor a Bad Thing. They’re just a thing, a tool, another way to communicate, publish and share information. With 200 million users on Facebook, an exploding Twitter population of 45 million, and more and more of our time spent online, they appear here to stay. Yes, there is bullying, spam and porn. There is also online support, fundraising, and philanthropy. Just like the Internet. Just like real life.

Social media isn’t for everyone – and using it depends on your attitude to openness, transparency and risk. But if you have something to say, information to share, a cause to raise awareness of, or even something to sell – it’s worth a look. You won’t get cancer, go mad or kill yourself. Really – don’t have nightmares.

See also:

• Bad Science: “Facebook causes cancer” Ben Goldacre’s blog, complete with references to actual research, 24 Feb 09
• Is Facebook damaging your brain? (video) Guardian interview with Susan Greenfield, 25 Feb 09

Welcome to the new Reed Media site! Yes, I’ve finally got around to a long-overdue makeover, and turned the whole thing into a blog – the obvious thing to do, what with social media being our line… And there are plenty of links to our presence on other social sites, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, AudioBoo and YouTube.

The site also focuses more on the things we do most often these days – particularly workshops. I’ve run lots of in-house workshops over the last year, and am doing more of those. But now you can also book onto a workshop at an individual delegate rate too. We’re starting off with three introductory half-day workshops on social media marketing, for the three groups we work with: publishers, nonprofits and small businesses. More will follow, and please let us know what other training you would like us to make available.

To be the first to hear about new workshops, and for details of special offers, be sure to sign up to our newsletter.

And then there’s the blog. This will be a regular source of news, commentary and tutorials on social media, so keep reading – and subscribe to the blog by RSS feed, email, or Twitter.

I hope you’ll find something useful here. Let us know how we can help you, and good luck with your social media marketing!

Our website redesign for the One World Trust. Driven by a powerful content management system that enables the Trust to add and maintain all content themselves, it includes:

• a ‘ticker’ of latest News Alerts on the front page
• delivery of News Alerts by RSS and email
• an html newsletter function
• staff contact forms
• a searchable publications database
• discussion forums for projects
• social bookmarking buttons
• user commenting and rating functions
• navigation includes drop-down menus and graphical navigation of projects with an interactive Venn diagram

We help you understand social media marketing. We run workshops, offer advice, conduct research, and create the media itself: websites, blogs, podcasts and video.

The social media revolution offers powerful new tools for you to reach your market. But where do you begin? Which tools are right for you? How do you use them effectively, and measure your results? And how will you find time for all those updates?

Our social media workshops will help you find out how to get the most out of social media marketing. Whether you’re just starting out and need an overview of tools, approaches and concepts, more experienced but need to plan a social media strategy, or have a specific area you want to learn more about, we’ll help you achieve your marketing goals.

Visit our workshops page for more details and booking instructions.

There’s a workshop for that. Our half-day Introduction to Social Media Marketing for Publishers will give you an overview of concepts, approaches and tools, and help you develop your social media strategy. We can also help you produce websites, blogs, podcasts and video to use in your campaigns, conduct market research and help with your strategic marketing plans.

Visit our blog Publishing Talk for more discussion about using social media to promote books, and follow the Publishing Talk Twitter feed – one of the most followed Twitter accounts in the publishing world – for regular updates and insights.

If you have publishing jobs to advertise, you can even post these on our jobs section – free for a limited time.

Small businesses are well-placed to use social media – it’s cheap, it’s effective, and it’s authentic. Because social media is a personal medium where authenticity matters, it’s much easier for you to get your personality across than a large corporation.

We offer workshops for small businesses, and have a separate dedicated web design, branding and marketing agency for small businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, freelancers and consultants: Small Business Studio. We can get you up and running with a website, logo design, branding and business stationery – and provide social media services too.

Our next workshop for small businesses is on Tuesday 20th October 2009. Find out more and book online (early bird discount expires 8th September).