As a teacher I can say that I really don't like the new system at all.  Many of my students have come from people who followed me, but were not ready to "commit" to lessons.  Over time they would decide that they were interested in lessons, and would then sign up.  Some students don't want to be "friends", they just want to learn.  

Also, it would have been nice to know this was going to happen so that we could "friend" our followers before they disappeared.  I have no idea how to reach out to the followers that I lost :(

I submitted a support ticket and received this response:

"Dear Becky,
Thank you for contacting us.
I am sorry to hear that you do not like this new feature, and I can understand your frustration. I understand that the connotation of the word "friend" is totally different from "followers" and it puts forward a different type of relationship.
At the moment, I cannot change this. However, I am passing this feedback onto our product team to let them hear your concerns as we want them to know how our teachers, students and users feel about this.
Sorry that I cannot be of more help at this time.
Let me know if you have any further questions.
Best,
---

Customer Support"

It may be that they would modify the friend/follower issue if enough people gave feedback.  I would suggest courteous feedback, however.  Remember the English proverb:  "You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar." :)

I follow some people to see their replies in language questions, their corrections, their posts etc. because I find them useful or interesting. Why do they have to follow me back if they are not interested in my activity? We don't want to be "friends",  we want to use each other's brains. 

I thought this was a language learning site, not a facebook clone.

Does this mean that there are no more followers, and that you can't follow people unless you accept them as friends?

Or that people are following you and you don't know who they are? Creepy....

But I can't see who gives me thumbs up, damn it! :)))))