Twitter Thinks It May Know Your Friends

Love the “People You May Know” feature on LinkedIn? Then you may be happy to learn that Twitter is essentially copying the feature. Instead of a widget, though, Twitter will suggest potential contacts via a weekly email.
Twitter already offers suggestions for who to follow, of course, and those have gotten more prominent (and relevant) on the site as the company has refined the widget. It’s based on an algorithm that has gotten better and more personalized, and now even takes into account your location.
“People You May Know,” however, gets populated differently. Twitter said in a blog post that the people suggested are based on “signals” such as who your friends follow and the contact information imported by the people you connect with on Twitter.
As an example, Twitter says if several people you follow also follow someone, that person could come up as a person you may know. Twitter told Mashable “People You May Know” uses contact information this way: If your friend uploads his address book and it includes your email address, and then you sign up for Twitter with that email address, Twitter may suggest your friend to you as an account to follow.


In any case, Twitter users should begin to get suggestions via email in their next weekly update from the service. Don’t want them? It’s easy enough to turn off in your settings for email notifications. The new feature strikes us as a little redundant considering the existence of to “Who to follow,” but we’ll reserve final judgment until we see the updates for ourselves.
What say you? Do you think “People You May Know” is extraneous, helpful or whatevs? Sound off in the comments.