Why Twitter’s ‘People You May Know’ is Broken

25 Nov 2012

Every now and then Twitter sends me an email suggesting people I should follow, labeling them as people I ‘may know’. Aside of how annoying this is, it suggests that Twitter the company has no idea how Twitter the software is used.

I ‘know’ the people I follow as much as I know Chandler Bing or Daniel Craig. That’s the thing about broadcast mechanisms. You don’t need to know people to transmit information. And Twitter is a broadcasting tool. It’s value lies in being able to broadcast short messages to the world, not in being able to connect with your friends. I don’t use Twitter to communicate with my friends,except for the odd exchange, I use Facebook. And it seems like there is a space for both to exist, but their functions are different.