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Fixing Twitter's suggested followers list

Fixing Twitter's suggested followers list

kottke:

Dave Winer has been irritated for some time at Twitter’s suggested users list. I don’t like the list either…it steers Twitter in a direction I don’t care for.

I “don’t care for” this direction either, but I think realistically it’s more likely that any random user is more interested in subscribing to a bunch of celebrities than a bunch of random active non-spam users. I wouldn’t be interested in seeing either list. It’s possible to skip the list as it exists, so why fight it? Surely the people who run Twitter should be allowed to steer things the way they want them to be steered, and surely as a (theoretical) business, it’s in Twitter’s best interest to get people to subscribe to celebrities because that’s only one step away (in some cases, zero steps away) from subscribing to a brand that they could sell services to.