Twitter Suggestions
I think twitter’s algorithm in providing suggestions on people to follow is broken. Here’s why.
If you are on Twitter, there is the likelihood that you have already received one of their emails suggesting some people to follow:
Disclaimer: I’d like to apologize first and foremost to the twitter accounts in the screenshot I uploaded. My post is making a case based on these accounts.
Sounds reasonable, right? Twitter providing you some people to follow who may pique your interest. Curiosity got the better of me, as I recall that a few days ago, I sent a tweet reply to Bob Tarne when he mentioned that Jean had already passed:
First off, I think Twitter’s system should have already known about this, given the likelihood that a lot of tweets have been posted about her passing. Doing a quick search on twitter would confirm this.
These were the tweets from people who are very active on Twitter. A simple AI or algorithm should have already detected that something happened with Jean.
Going further, I clicked on Jean’s photo on the email and I was redirected to her Twitter profile:
Notice that her last tweet happened twelve days ago.
Again, going further, I clicked on the other accounts that were suggested by Twitter:
These account suggested by Twitter is written in Japanese, a language which I don’t have any knowledge nor has written about. Notice as well that this account only has a few tweets, and very little following. Going on to the other account:
Again, this account suggested by Twitter has very few followers and the last tweet made happened on May 29.
Reading all the tweets on the two latter accounts would simply reveal that I won’t be following them anytime soon, as what they are sharing simply does not bode on my interest nor understanding.
Based on this, I think it is very clear that Twitter has some problems with its algorithm on the suggested accounts to be followed.
- Twitter should only suggest for accounts to be followed who are very active. I can’t see any point why someone would follow an account that has not made any relevant tweet.
- Make sure that the accounts being suggested will clearly demonstrate why the person receiving the email will have a valid reason to follow the account. If you can’t demonstrate this, your email simply equates to spam.
- Twitter would likely already have a history if someone has looked at the profile of an account. They could have also known whether that someone has examined / read the tweets of that account. If that person did not followed that account, then there is the likelihood that suggesting that same account through email is likely not gonna work and would only be deemed as annoyance by the person receiving the email.
The points I’ve outlined may be small things, but Twitter is clearly losing engagement with their users. There’s still a lot of value with Twitter, and one way for them to realize that value is by diving through their treasure trove of data that is available to them. Anything small that they could fix which clearly demonstrates value should be done. Anything small that is broken and not getting fixed becomes an annoyance.
