Twitter's Suggested Users List is Part of Mainstream Push

Posted on March 16, 2009

Twitter recently added a list of suggested users and some of the users and organizations on the list are said to be adding 10,000 followers are day. Some of these followers won't be very useful since they are just bored newbies bulk following the entire list but overall it's a big benefit to the people and organizations listed. The concept is very similar to the recommended feeds (bundled feeds) on services like Bloglines and Google Reader.

There has been a backlash from some Twitter users in the tech community. The argument is that the suggested users list gives certain Twitter accounts too much popularity and boosts some Twitter users that have not been using Twitter nearly as long as some users who have been on Twitter since it began. It is probably unfair to users that have been on Twitter since the beginning but Twitter's goal was never to be just a tool for the tech community or for early adapters.

Twitter has always had every intention of going mainstream. The fact that they did not sell either to Facebook or Google is a sign that they intend to get very big, very quickly. One way to do this is to showcase some of the most popular users of Twitter. The big celebrities. The big mainstream users. The leaders in different niches. They want these users to have lots and lots of followers so they will tell others about Twitter. They want to use these big fish to lure in other big fish. They also want the mainstream media to start keeping track of these big celebrity Twitters.

It was inevitable that celebrity Twitter users like Shaq and Britney Spears would probably have ridiculous amounts of Twitter followers. By including them in the Suggested Users list Twitter is probably just fast-forwarding what would have eventually happened anyway. Twitter wanted this to happen or they never would have put so many celebrities in the list. Some of the tech blogs and niche blogs in other categories have a good argument that Twitter is being unfair by putting competing blogs on the Suggested Users list and thereby granting them tons of followers. But it's nothing new. Those bundled feeds put together by RSS aggregators have never really been completely fair either.