Twitter Adds New “Who To Follow” Tab
The dominant social networking site, Twitter, has just updated their mobile apps to include a “Who To Follow” section on all homepages. This new section will show users other accounts they might be interested in following, very similarly to how Facebook has their “People You May Know” page. As Roberto Baldwin states in his Engadget article covering the news story, the new feature will be very non-disruptive to the existing homepage, and will allow for the users to delete the tab from their sight and never have to see it again. The new tab will not always be visible, especially if you use your account frequently; however, if you are a person who only checks on their page a couple times a week, Twitter will almost always keep this tab open for you to try and make their website more entertaining.
This article relates to our Networks class because of the methods Twitter uses to recommend the new pages to its users. It uses many algorithms, one of which looks at friends of friends of the user. Twitter looks at the whole network surrounding the user, and makes recommendations based off links that are nonexistent, but which could very easily be added. This is very common on any social networking site, and is very similar to our first homework assignment, where we had to look at the strength of links and determine who would be the best friend to recommend to the user. Recommendations are also based off location and cell contacts. The networks of your cell phone and city of residence are both looked at to see who would be a good recommendation. Twitter is a little late on adding this sort of feature to their mobile apps on iOS and Android, but as long as they do a good job with their recommendations and their users find it helpful, it is here to stay.
http://www.engadget.com/2015/09/04/twitter-who-to-follow/