Follows of follows or "tribe" feeds like Primal has are more useful
Yes, a step in the right direction. It's kind of a Web of Trust, which can be very useful for fighting spam etc...
It's a good first step. When you account for negative reputation indicators (web of distrust) and bidirectional follows (friend connections), then you can calculate some really solid metrics that are almost impossible to game by scammers and dominate by having the most followers.