Since Titles are now a thing of the past how does this change the ecosystem? Is this some new kind of popularity contest? How does this site know valid and informative post from the ones that can be spam?
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I'm only going to follow people who genuinely interest me. Without titles, I see this becoming some sort of popularity contest, yeah. But I'm not going to care nearly as much as getting a cool title. Probably not at all, actually.
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It means how much swag that particular user has.
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Follow people who interest, inform, and/or entertain you. You get to design your own experience now. It's not a popularity contest, though I'm sure some people will turn it into one at some point. The best part is, you can make it a popularity contest if you want to, and ignore it if you don't :-)
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join date
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Quality of the content that user posts. Or their name recognition status.
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Just like what followers mean to me on Twitter and Tumblr. Almost nothing.
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Depends on the most active/helpful users, users that you enjoy see posting and that are generally there to help others