Some practices that can make you become an invalid user for the ranking

Last week we made some updates of the FollowFriday.com ranking rules, to maintain the purity of the ranking and ensure that it is free of manipulation and is a true reflection of those valuable recommendations made.

However, there is another set of criteria that our quality team manually applied which are aimed at eliminating from the ranking those users who tweet in order to receive more recommendations than they would normally deserve.

Below we explain some methods that can make you become an invalid user for the ranking:

• One of the rules is about the number of recommendations that a user can make. Each user can make up to 50 recommendations per week. However, there are users who send tweets outside the time stipulated for recommendations to be considered (between Thursday 12:00 GMT and Saturday 12:00 GMT). This practice leads to behavior that is not considered genuine for the ranking.
• According to the ranking rules, if our team detects there are a lot of accounts that are working together to promote themselves artificially, they will be banned automatically. Respect to this point, we would like to add that not only users who collaborate with each other can be cancelled, but also those who create multiple accounts to promote one specific profile.
• The ranking monitors tweets that include one of these hashtags: #ff, #followfriday, #cuate, #sigueelviernes, #vivaviernes and #shoutout. However, we have identified some people who use different hashtags to make recommendations which are not counted within the maximum of 50. Many users return a recommendation made with a different hashtag by using a monitored hashtag, detracting value from this recommendation.
• Include any monitored hashtag in a tweet in which there is no recommendation of anybody also violates the spirit of the ranking which is to be as spontaneous as possible.
• Moving from one country to another where there is less "competition" is also considered a practice which is penalised. To avoid confusion, make sure you appear in the correct rankings.
• Finally, asking for recommendations via DM or filling your timeline with requests are also considered unfriendly practices in line with the followfriday.com objectives.

These are not the only possible methods of breaking the rules and for this reason any fraudulent attempt to manipulate the ranking will be penalized.

If you think you have been unjustly banned, you can contact us by completing this form and explaining your action. Our team will review each case individually and reinstate those accounts that we consider OK.

Now, with our new FFValidator tool, you can check if a #followfriday recommendation is valid for the FollowFriday Ranking and how much it is worth.