Trouble Deciding Who to Follow on Twitter? These Tools and Apps Make it Easy
Want less chatter from the Twitterverse? Need good recommendations on who to follow without getting a flood of spam and marketing garbage? Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is keen on making sure Twitter users find what they’re looking for. “[W]e spend a lot of time thinking about following," writes Stone. “In fact, this information network brims with such abundant variety that it helps to have a guide.” With that in mind, Twitter has released some helpful tools that make getting relevant information easier and faster than before.
Suggestions for You
Twitter’s Suggestions for You, which you’ll see as soon as you login, is a recommendation service based on who you follow and who they follow. You can follow suggested members directly, or click “Hide” to prevent that person from being suggested again. If you click someone’s profile, you’ll also see suggested tweeters like them. Twitter’s developers are already hard at work on an API to let programmers add this feature to their sites, desktop programs and mobile apps. To start using it, login at Twitter.com or click the “Find People” link.
Tweets App on LinkedIn
Lots of people add their Twitter URL to their LinkedIn profile, but what if you had a way to find professionals and other relevant connections directly from Twitter to LinkedIn? That’s the purpose of the Tweets App, originally developed in November 2009 and given a major upgrade in May of this year. Most notably, the “Connections to Follow” module will recommend new followers based on your existing LinkedIn connections. You can also save these connections as a dynamic list so that you always stay up to date with new followers from LinkedIn.
Fast Follow via SMS
SMS is at the heart of Twitter’s original purpose and design, so it makes sense that they’d unroll “Fast Follow”, a way to send a tweet to another user’s phone even if they’re not signed up with Twitter. This is a quick way to follow someone in real-time after seeing their @username on a billboard, store sign or hearing it on a radio ad. More tips for using Twitter with SMS can be found on the Twitter blog.
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