14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter has started rolling out a new feature that should help you find other users who may share your interests or you may want to follow. Called “Suggestions for You,” the feature uses an algorithm-based approach to determine who to suggest. It looks at several factors and then determines who on Twitter may share your interests.
“Today we're beginning to roll out a simple, but powerful new feature to help address that -- ‘Suggestions for You.’ The algorithms in this feature, built by our user relevance team, suggest people you don’t currently follow that you may find interesting. The suggestions are based on several factors, including people you follow and the people they follow,” Twitter announced.
The suggestions will show up on the website and can be accessed in the Find People section. There you’ll see the “Suggestions for You” tab which lists people picked by the Twitter algorithm. This alone would have meant that not that many users would have stumbled upon it.
But Twitter also lists suggestions when you visit another users’ profile in the new “Who to follow” area. What’s more, when you follow someone Twitter will also suggests other users that may be similar. This means that you’re likely to see the feature in action quite a lot of times.
If it works even modestly well, it’s going to have a big impact on the site. Twitter is a social network at heart, but the emphasis has always been more on the conversation rather than the contacts. In fact, this may be the single biggest such feature Twitter has rolled out so far.
The suggestions are determined by several factors including people you both follow. In fact, Twitter had been testing this very feature a few months back. Twitter says the new suggestion features will available for developers through the API as well.