Have you logged into you twitter.com page recently? For me I typically use tweetdeck on my desktop and twitter(tweetie 2) for iPhone, and I do not go into my actual twitter account. This may change as twitter’s new “Who to Follow” option in the sidebar seems to be pretty fantastic. I read a post on techcrunch earlier that alerted me to the new twitter option. When I logged in the two people listed on my “who to follow” were two people that I could not imagine I did not already follow. Upon clicking on “view more” there were many people I was interested in following or surprised I was not already following. Now yes there are other examples of “suggestions” available already in place in social media, particularly with Facebook.
MG Siegler, TechCrunch’s author, make a great point about Facebook’s use of suggestions in the article above saying, “Facebook continues to be more about people you actually know. Just because a friend of yours knows someone, it doesn’t mean you will. If it’s a lot of friends that you share in common, that’s a good indicator, but that whittles down the possibilities.”
Twitter’s program seems to takes into account you follows, common follows. For example I follow person A and person B, both person A and B follow person C, whom I do not follow. These are people that are likely to show up in your “who to follow”(on a larger sample scale than two common people). One thing that I believe fully is that for Student Affairs professionals, expanding your twitter SA circle will help increase the online learning experience exponentially.
Twitter gives SA pros the perfect opportunity to put themselves out there and connect with people in a low risk venue. Twitter and facebook are both farely new but social norms have already been established. It is more socially acceptable to follow people you dont know on twitter than it is to friend request someone you even sort of know of facebook. Twitter’s suggestions have the opportunity to be much more socially acceptable. Twitters blog update about suggestions.
Have you checked out who twitter suggests you follow? Have you used it? Have you been provided with valuable suggestions on who to follow?
