In Social Media, there was a tendency to create friendships. The most popular Social Network, Facebook, works in this way, as does LinkedIn. This particular method requires one user to send a friend/connection request and the other user to accept or reject this request.
Now, this scenario is changing. Why do I need to be informed about a user's news, when he simply wants to be informed about mine? Social Networks such as Twitter, Pinterest and Google+operate with the follow. This means that a user follows as many users as he wants and does not expect any acceptance. This is the new Trend of Social Media.
Facebook, as I mentioned, operates on friendships, but it also has a follow option for users' public posts if they choose to activate the option. Also, two recent examples of adopting the follow option are those of LinkedIn and Foursquare.
LinkedIn quietly enabled the option to follow any user, so that the posts that users create through the professional Social Network's publishing platform, as well as their other public information, become visible. Foursquare, after splitting into two applications and leaving check-ins behind, chose to enable the follow function for its users in its brand new app, so that they can easily update each other about the tips left by each other.
Finally, in addition to friends and follows, there is also a new trend of automatically adding users based on their phone number from the contact list on mobile devices.
Source: digitallife.gr
