It appears that there is a new policy on italki that stops me from replying to a potential student unless the two of us are following each other.  So if I get a message from someone new, I can't reply like in the past, I have to first follow him/her, then invite him/her to follow me, at which point I can then finally reply to the original message!  This is very irritating, especially if I want to give a simple reply to a simple question or statement.

I'm sure that italki has become enamored of the Facebook model of encouraging the most number of members as possible to follow each other, but I don't think we should have to go through this elaborate dance simply in order to answer someone's unsolicited question.