Twitter’s Suggested User List: the only people who give a fuck are people you shouldn’t give a fuck about
Earlier on, @davewiner linked to this blog post over on Twittercism regarding Twitter’s controversial Suggested User List. The Suggested User List is a list of people which pop up as suggestions when one creates a Twitter account. I’ve seen it occasionally when setting up Twitter accounts, but I don’t really look at it in any great detail.
For those people who join Twitter but without any real friends or contacts, the Suggested User List is basically there to help them find interesting people to follow - but there’s been accusations that the whole thing is run on a pay-to-play basis with secretive deals between Twitter and the brands and celebrities who are listed on the Suggested User List.
I still don’t see why anyone gives a fuck though. Twitter have made a feature which is of use to some people. Twitter can run this however they like - they can be as open or secretive about it, and do it based on pay or favours or whatever. But Shéa Bennett of Twittercism seems to see Twitter followers as some kind of important commodity, and that the Suggested User List ought to have an open process - if a company wants to pay to get on the list, they should be able to.
The whole thing strikes me as strange. If you seriously think that Twitter’s Suggested User List is at all important in the grand scheme of things, may I suggest that you stick a broken bottle up your anus? I mean, you’d be doing yourself an important service in recalibrating your notion of what’s important in life. If you think the Suggested User List is important, you are taking Twitter way too seriously. You probably spend your time worrying about your rankings on Twitalyzer and other similarly pointless services.
I’ve currently got, oh, about 1,200 followers on Twitter. I’m not sure why. Some of them are friends and colleagues while others are auto-following Twitter whores and so on. Imagine if when I next go to sleep that number were to double or triple in size. What benefit does that actually give me? More people can now read my frustrated rants about how much computers suck, idiots who turn their personal stereos too loud and all the highly interesting things I have to say while on the toilet. The value of Twitter wouldn’t change a great deal with more followers. Professionally, Twitter has no use at all. Personally, having increasing the number of followers I have doesn’t mean I can have more interesting conversations. In fact, it actually makes things worse - I have to basically modify what I say in those circumstances so that I don’t confuse or offend the proportionally higher number of idiots that would follow if more people generally were to follow.
