Twitter amends Suggested User list

Twitter has made its suggested user list more like Facebook's

Twitter has amended its controversial Suggested User list which carried the names of micro-bloggers that the company believes are ideal for new users to follow in order to get a good idea of the social networking site.

The list has now been categorised into topics with sections such as technology, politics, news and science.

Opponents of the list had argued that the process was unfair because it helped some people to gain large numbers of followers easily.

The new list offers a better idea of why certain people have been selected, according to Twitter, and provides more structure for new users wanting to benefit from relevant updates in line with their interests.

Twitter product team manager Josh Elman explained in a blog post that the new list, like the old version, will be based on algorithms.

However, Elman did not reveal whether the new categorised lists will also be open to the manual process applied to the old version, where the product team would filter the list after the algorithm had done its work.

Elman joined Twitter last year after leaving Facebook's platform team. His work on the update to the list is significant because commentators had argued that Twitter should reform its suggested users to be more like Facebook's, where a user's profile contains a side list with recommended contacts based on their social graph.

"We've found that the power of suggestion can be a great thing to help people get started, but it's important that we suggest things relevant to them," he said.

"Rather than suggesting a random set of 20 users for a new user to follow, now we let users browse into the areas they are interested in and choose who they want to follow from these lists.

"These lists will be refreshed frequently as the algorithms identify new u sers who should be suggested, and some that are not as engaging to new users will be removed."

The technology user list generated by the algorithm contains Twitter executives and co-founders, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, Cisco chief technology officer Padmasree Warrior, as well as technology columnists, journalists and conference organisers.

Gates only signed up to Twitter a couple of days ago, so it is unclear why he is already marked as a role model for other Twitter followers.