As you suggest, a recommendation feature based on the things I’m interested in would be fine, such as what Amazon does. However, if Amazon tailored their recommendations to just push the 100 or so books *they* wanted on you that had no connection to the things you’d searched for, then that would be comparable to what Twitter is doing now. And people would complain – why should those authors benefit over everybody else? What about *my* interests?

Even the top 100 most popular users would be a more democratic system than what we have now on Twitter (although not a good one).

If you check the box, your most recent blog post will be linked to at the bottom of your comment, assuming it’s compatible.

P.s. I can’t tell what I’m accomplishing when I check or uncheck the box next to my weblog post title in your comment submission form.

http://twitter.com/invitations/suggestions

There’s more than on the list you see above – some seem to pop in and pop out while others are always on there. Relatively, of course, it’s still a very, very minor section of the network – and that’s why it’s an issue, because of the advantage afforded to the few over the many. We can debate about exactly what that advantage entails (which we have elsewhere in this blog), but at a minimum it’s a massive increase in network size. Moreover, because the users in the SUL inevitably breach the top 100 list of all users on the network, their profile is raised accordingly.

The statement of mine that you quote is not the same as saying “Everybody not on the list thinks it is harmful and bad.” The reason why the SUL isn’t a huge deal is because most people are oblivious or don’t care. That isn’t the point – most people on any network are oblivious to the behind-the-scenes and technical stuff. It certainly isn’t “envy” on my part – I fully expect the people Twitter suggests to be well-known, mostly household names, and would never expect to make such a list myself (certainly now). But I also think the individuals on there should be relevant to *me*, or anybody else looking for recommendations on who to follow. I’ve found few on the list worth even the effort of following, and when I have, they’ve soon been dropped. Tila Tequila was on there, for God’s sake!

I don’t disagree with your closing paragraph – total followers is a poor metric – but it’s a common one on any social network, and it’s the advantages that a massive network gives anybody that is what really matters here. And the likes of @Oprah and @MarthaStewart neither need anybody’s help, nor are they ever going to be a good example of a user worth following.

That’s an absurd premise. Millions of people use Twitter. A couple dozen people are on the suggested users list. If a “majority” of Twitter users thought the list was bad and/or harmful, they would have raised so much hell that the company stopped offering it.

Most of the criticism of the list that I see is coming from a few high-volume complainers who are clearly motivated by envy, no matter how much they claim otherwise.

To me, the freak out over the list is just another sign that follower count is a poor metric. It would be better to know the number of followers who’ve taken action in regard to your tweets, by replying or retweeting.

The monetize method is even a greater idea. Especially since Twitter does not seem to know how to make any money, despite having all of power to make millions at the moment. I guess the most interesting thing is that as much as we express ourselves about Twitter, we cannot let it go…
.-= Juscelino M. Acevedo´s last blog ..KidZui: The Internet For Kids =-.