Twitter has rolled out a new feature based on studying its users’ use of the #FollowFriday or #FF hashtags. It suggests people you may be interested in following based on, among other things, who you follow and who they follow. You’ll see this on a tab called Suggestions For You on the Find People page.

“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. The trouble is finding all of them. Today we’re beginning to roll out a simple, but powerful new feature to help address that — “Suggestions for You”. The algorithms in this feature, built by our user relevance team, suggest people you don’t currently follow that you may find interesting. The suggestions are based on several factors, including people you follow and the people they follow. You’ll see these suggestions on Twitter.com and the Find People section. If you like a suggestion, click “follow”; if you don’t, click “hide,” and we’ll try not to suggest that user again.” From the Official Twitter Blog.

Though not perfect, Social Follow helps users passively find new friends and in the long run may be a more productive alternative to the flood of follow Fridays that occur now. There has been no word on whether or not companies will someday be able to pay Twitter to be recommended to appropriate users, but that would certainly go over well. For now, it’s not only a handy new feature, but it will be interesting to see how this impacts the use of #FollowFriday over time.

Enjoy!

Eric