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Twitter Launches A “Who To Follow” People Directory

Matt McGee on November 19, 2010 at 2:51 am

The next time you login to Twitter.com, you might see a new tab at the top of the page called “Directory” or “People” or “Who to Follow.” Different names for Twitter’s latest tool for helping users find new accounts to follow. And it’s their best attempt yet at facilitating user connections. Here’s a screenshot of what the test looks like.

The tab says “Directory” (as circled) in the screenshot above, but we’ve also seen the words “Who To Follow” used and “People” has been spotted by TechCrunch. If you don’t see the tab/link, you may still be able to use it by going to http://twitter.com/#!/who_to_follow.

The new area defaults to showing a list of suggestions, similar to the users that are recommended on your home page.

It’s a bit more clever over on the right side: Twitter shows you the 10 accounts you’ve most recently followed, and clicking on each one will show two accounts that are similar. (Note: this feature doesn’t seem to work if you’ve followed a newly-created account. Those accounts may not have been around long enough to develop a reputation score and be classified with similar accounts.)

Below that, there’s Twitter’s existing “Invite Friends” email tool, and two new links to recommendation tools from Bing and Listorious.

Browse By Interest

Two other tabs on the left side let you browse categories of users (like “Books,” “Charity,” “Entertainment,” etc.):

Import Contacts

You find friends via their email or a LinkedIn account:

Yes, Facebook is missing. Facebook has been blocking Twitter from accessing its information since January.

Search For Friends

There’s also a search box where you can do keyword searches (like “Yankees” or “lady gaga”) to find suggestions. Our story, The Twitter Alphabet: From A Googler To Jay-Z, Recommended Users From A-Z, has some fun with this.

Twitter has made several attempts over the years to help users find new accounts worth following; this version seems to be the most comprehensive and effective to date.

Below, some of our previous stories on how to find people to follow on Twitter:

About The Author

Matt McGee

Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.