Personally, what does it mean to you when you add someone to your fluther?

Having being on this site for around a month now, I’ve seen quite a lot of accounts. Some have many people on their fluther. Some don’t.

But I’ve found myself thinking… Why do we need this fluther system? Is it really, as the FAQ says, “the group of people that you’re interested in following. They can be friends, or just people you find intriguing.”

Honestly speaking, I would still browse through the whole site anyway whether or not I had a group of people whose questions I’m interested in; the number of new questions asked at any one time isn’t that large. I’m in essence following everyone whether or not I have a certain group of people in my fluther.

So this led me on to the next thought… Maybe it’s just because you would like to be friends with that person. But then again… Why should you need to show that you’re friends with that person by adding them to your fluther? I’d assume that you can still talk with them on the site whether or not they’re in your fluther or not. Is there a need to ‘publicise’ things?

Or is it just a sign between you and the other person that you accept them and find them interesting and if the rest of the internet can see this, well… What the heck?

Personally, the fluther I have is the fluther I have only because the people in my fluther used to be from the other forum/Q&A website I used to frequent.

But it looks like the fluther system actually is a lot more than just that for many here.

Care to share?