“You Both Follow” – Coming soon to a Twitter timeline near you?
June 4, 2010 - By Erin Stuelke
Twitter is under way testing a new feature it calls “You Both Follow”. One of the site’s engineers, Nick Kallen, tweeted recently that the feature has been rolled out to 10% of users.
Presumably, the feature will work much like Facebook’s “Mutual Friends” where you can see the people you have in common with any other Tweeters. As the name suggests, it matches who you’re both following, not who is following you.
What the "You Both Follow" feature might look like.
CNET’s Caroline McCarthy points out, “if you follow lots of people or companies or news outlets in common, presumably you might have something in common with that user as well and might want to follow him or her in turn.”
The advantage Twitter’s “You Both Follow” feature has over Facebook’s “Mutual Friends” is that it compares everyone and everything you’re interested in, rather than just your “friends”. Twitter’s simpler model gives them an edge since all accounts are created equal whether you’re a real person, a news outlet, a gaming website, or an interest group. People will be able to make more robust choices about who they want to follow. If fully implemented, it will definitely make #FollowFriday a lot more interesting.
Sources:
