One of the trends which has popped up on Twitter and become very popular is the weekly ritual of suggesting people that you believe others should follow. “Follow Friday,” as it is called, is a useful way to discover people who your friends (followers) find interesting, insightful, entertaining or helpful.

When tweeting out the suggestions, users add the #followfriday hashtag to their tweets, so suggestions can be easily searched by using Twitter Search or the search functionality on third-party Twitter applications, like TweetDeck or Seesmic. For more information on the hashtags people are using, check out http://hashtags.org. The site shows trends in hashtag useage on Twitter. As of this post, the site listed #followfriday as the second most popular hashtag – having been used 89,279 times. The most popular hashtag is #tcot, which stands for “top conservatives on twitter” and is a way for conservatives to watch what fellow right-minded users are saying.

Over the past couple weeks, I’ve participated in #followfriday by suggesting journalists like AFP’s brilliant @OKnox, CBS’s legendary @markknoller and the Seattle PI’s biz beat scribe @reporterAJ. I’ve also recommended people follow the amusing tweets of @danecook and @theonion. For thoughts on fitness, I’ve noted @lancearmstrong and @triboomer. By going beyond the simple “What are you doing?” question Twitter poses, the most notable users of the service enrich the lives of their followers.

Still confused about Twitter and reticent about becoming a user? Here’s a great video from Common Craft which explains – in plain English – how Twitter works and why it makes sense to join.