Twitter offers help in finding accounts to follow

Twitter wants to help you build your network.

The micro-blogging service began rolling out a new feature Friday called "Suggestions for You" which directs users to other Twitter accounts they may find interesting.

"With more than a hundred million users on Twitter, there are sure to be at least dozens of accounts out there that will reflect your interests," Twitter said on its official blog.

"The trouble is finding all of them," it said. "Today we're beginning to roll out a simple, but powerful new feature to help address that."

Twitter said the "Suggestions for You" algorithms find other accounts of potential interest using various factors, including "people you follow and the people they follow."

A Twitter user who clicks on the "Who to Follow" link on the Twitter homepage sees a list of suggested accounts to follow.

Twitter, which combines the strengths of blogs and instant messaging services, enables users to send and receive short messages of up to 140 characters on personal computers and mobile devices.

Twitter said it planned to make the suggestions feature available to developers of desktop and mobile applications for Twitter.

Social network Facebook already offers a similar feature called "People You May Know" which suggests possible new friends to members.

(c) 2010 AFP