Hi Sunny,
In EasySocial, in Friend, you will need to first send a 'friend' request to someone and when that someone approved your request, you two are now friends.
And for followers, you do not need to be the friend to someone if you want to follow a person.
When you follow someone, you may see the person updates ( story post and etc) in their profile page. However, if that person set their item's privacy to 'friends' only, you will then no able to see those items from the person you followed.
Hope the above clarify your doubts on friends vs follower.
Hope this help and have a nice day!