• Twitter Launches 'Connections,' Its Own Version Of Facebook's 'Mutual Friends'

    Wednesday, January 26th, 2011

    Alexia Tsotsis is the co-editor of TechCrunch. She attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, majoring in Writing and Art, and moved to New York City shortly after graduation to work in the Media industry. After four years of living in New York and attending courses at New York University, she returned to Los Angeles in... → Learn More

    Twitter has collapsed its “Followed By” and “You Both Follow” features into one area called “Connections” which allows you to see what users you have in common with other Twitter users. While you still can’t see the number of users you have in common, the individual features are now expandable and you can see complete lists of mutual follows and people you are both followed by for any given user, when you click “more.”

    Even though they have experimented with the feature before, the change is a permanent step towards developing a more useful Twitter social graph. Says Twitter’s Carolyn Penner, “By exposing accounts that you and another user have in common, you will now know how those accounts are connected to other accounts you already follow. As a result, you’ll be able to make more informed decisions about which accounts to follow.”

    Facebook and Foursquare have had “friends in common” social graph features for awhile, but Twitter has taken some time working out the kinks on this because the concept of “friend” v.s. “follower” (not to mention ”followed”) is more difficult to apply to the microblogging network.

    Even though Twitter’s infinite chains of possible one way connections are sometimes hard to um, follow, they give the company the leeway to launch many more features based on this complex social graph. Twitter has no plans for new ‘Connections’ features at this time.

    Thanks: Vikas SN

    Company: Twitter
    Website: twitter.com
    Launch Date: March 21, 2006
    Funding: $1.16B

    Twitter, founded by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 (launched publicly in July 2006), is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to post updates 140 characters long. Twitter “is a real-time information network that connects [users] to the latest stories, ideas, opinions, and news.” The service can be accessed through a variety of methods, including Twitter’s website; text messaging; instant messaging; and third-party desktop, mobile, and web applications. Twitter is currently available in...

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