14 DAY TRIAL // Google+ launched as a mixture of Twitter and Facebook. While everyone wanted to see Google go after Facebook, probably even Google itself, so far, most people are treating it more like Twitter than Facebook. In the early days, perhaps it's the best approach.
The latest example is a suggested users list, very much like Twitter's, to help people starting out with Google+ find others to follow. Again, the emphasis here is on 'following' rather than 'friending,' which is not really possible in Google+, because of the circles system.
The suggested users list is already live both for those signing up and for new users.
For now, there doesn't seem to be any magical algorithm powering it and serving you with ultra-relevant suggestions.
Most of the suggestions are for people who already have a lot of followers on the site, famous people in general, whether they're regular celebrities or tech world superstars.
Google is also enticing those that may not have warmed up to Google+, but who have a large following on other social networks, Twitter in particular, with placement in the suggested users list.
"We're about to pilot a 'suggested user'-like mechanism on Google+. If you've got more than 100k followers on Twitter, DM me - lets talk!," Google's Brad Horowitz tweeted.
He's not beating about the bush, he is asking people who are doing well on Twitter to join or be more active on Google+ with the implied promise that a placement on the suggested users list could boost their follower count tremendously.
Which is fairly accurate, Twitter's early incarnation of the suggested users list propelled those on it to the higher echelons of Twitter hierarchy, gaining hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers from the feature alone.
Twitter changed the list, it has more personalized suggestions yet, but it seems that Google+'s list is less advanced. Google has said that it is working on a recommendations algorithm, which would find the perfect people to follow for each user, but the decision to launch with a more limited system, which would prop up follower numbers for some (few) users, may have been a deliberate one.