#FollowFriday began as a trend in January of this year, but unlike most trends, it stuck. WebProNews spoke with Micah Baldwin, the creator of #FollowFriday, about the trend’s humble beginning. He simply wanted to bring a couple of his friends together that hadn’t previously met or interacted. He said he thought he would try a “recommendation thing and it blew up,” to say the least.

Despite the strong success of the tool, it has received some criticism. Most people, naturally, set certain metrics such as ranking #1 in Google and getting as many friends and followers as possible through Facebook and Twitter respectively.

As a result however, some people began misusing #FollowFriday. They began using it as a marketing tool to gain a certain number of followers. For them, the tool became a game, which completely went away from its original purpose.

There are some who still use it properly. Twitter Co-founder Jack Dorsey even said that #FollowFriday and the retweet were the two greatest developments to come from the Twitter community. Last month, the company announced that it would soon be launching Twitter Lists, which would essentially eliminate #FollowFriday and the problems associated with it.

The good news is that, #FollowFriday, or the discovery mechanism, will be integrated directly into Twitter. The lists are currently only available to a small group of users for testing but will soon launch for all users.

Update 10/30/09 : Twitter announced on its blog today that their Lists feature is now available for everyone.