Twitter to offer tailored suggestions on who to follow

Having trouble figuring out who to follow on Twitter? The microblogging service announced today it is experimenting with tailored suggestions based on the individual's person interests. "Currently, when new users come to Twitter, we show them all almost the same suggestions for what or who to follow," Othman Laraki, Twitter's director of global growth, wrote on a company blog. "That isn't ideal." Newbies and seasoned users alike will soon see personalized suggestions in Twitter's "Who to Follow" section based on the service's knowledge of users, including the Web sites they visit. The suggestions "are built on accounts followed by other Twitter users and visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem," Laraki wrote:"We receive visit information when sites have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets, similar to what many other web companies -- including LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube -- do when they're integrated into websites. By recognizing which accounts are frequently followed by people who visit popular sites, we can recommend those accounts to others who have visited those sites within the last ten days." Twitter, which earlier in the day announced its support for the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Track feature, said users who have the DNT feature enabled in their browsers will not have personal information collected and will not see any tailored suggestions. Users will also have the option to manually disable the function, which will have a limited rollout at the beginning.