I’ve been frustrated with the suggested users feature on Twitter for a while now, but that frustration has reached a new high with the addition of Kim, Khloe and Kourtney Kardashian (which @alicam pointed out). A few weeks ago @ev recognized the flaws in the system and asked for suggestions on making the service better. This is certainly not what any of us had in mind. These rich, famous-for-no-reason sisters are going to gain hundreds of thousands of followers – not because they are interesting, but because people usually just follow the default bucket of people Twitter suggests.

I implore the Twitter team to use the reach of this default setting for good! What about the people who are working hard every day to add value to their followers? The people who are helping develop your ecosystem with third party applications? The lesser-knowns who are doing good things for the community?

You might say, “so they get a bunch of followers, so what?” And I say, that’s what their PR people are for. Twitter is handing over what equates to millions of dollars of exposure to people who have (generally) nothing interesting to say. Sure, some of us might be interested in @souljaboy’s new tattoo, or Kim K’s gym schedule – but I assure you that’s not why Twitter has become what it is today. It’s become one of the most useful utilities on the web, and if all of the celebrities were removed tomorrow, it wouldn’t be any less useful.

Further, it sends the wrong idea to new users of what Twitter is about. It’s about everyone having a voice, and ideas spreading that might not otherwise. Twitter, I beg you, stop with the celeb coddling! There’s a whole channel on cable dedicated to the mind-numbing reality of these celebrities. What I really don’t understand is that there are hundreds of celebs and notable people in the world who are ACTUALLY interesting, and you’ve managed to add the most uninteresting of them. A quick rule of thumb – Time magazine, add them to the list. Star magazine, don’t add them to the list.

If you trusted your users to determine who the most valuable people are to follow, you can’t lose. If you continue to hold the keys to this magic list, people will revolt. Employ a simple (fair) algorithm that let’s the community decide. It can be done in a hundred lines of code tops. We want the suggestions (I discovered a few great non-celebs from the list and continue to follow and enjoy them). New users NEED the suggestions to get started. But we need your team to hand over the keys.

I try not to complain about things without having a solution. It might not be perfect, but here’s how I would fix this.

1. Move all celebrities to their own tab in the featured users list. The people who are interested in them will find them. You can’t very well remove them without pissing off some (confusingly) powerful people. This is a fair way to handle this.
2. Instead of the Twitter team hand-picking people to put on this list, trust your users and employ an algorithm.
3. Add a step to the suggested users process where I input a few keywords related to my interests. Or at the very least, let me choose some pre-defined categories. Users wanting to get on the list can select up to 3 categories to be considered for.
4. Factor in total number of new followers over a given period of time for everyone who does NOT appear on the list today. The result will be people who are busting their asses to add value to the stream and are doing a good job at it.
5. Factor in the number of Re-Tweets for these users, to confirm that people actually find value in what they have to say.
6. Brands can pay to be on the list, this is an open market. A tool as powerful as Twitter should be democratic and not favor any companies over others.
7. If a brand is doing something great for charity, or the environment, they get a pass.
8. After a few weeks, the featured users have amassed a huge following, it’s someone else’s turn.
9. Reserve 10% of the spots on the list to do with what you like. We understand that there are marketing implications and opportunities for you to make helpful business connections using this list.
10. Build in the necessary filters to eliminate ‘gaming’ of the system.
    

Spend the weekend building this functionality. There are no scaling issues with this, you can set some minimum criteria to cut down the query load on your servers. Launch it on Monday and bask in the overwhelming praise you get from your passionate and loyal community (but turn off your voicemail to avoid calls from PR people screaming at you).

Twitter is about giving the little guy a voice. We hear enough about the celebs already. And hell, if they’re that interesting, I bet the new suggested users will talk about them. My hat goes off to you guys, you’ve built something incredible. Don’t let the star-culture pollute it.

@Justyn

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1) Personable
2) Witty
3) Fair but Firm
4) Resourceful
5) Generous
6) Humble
7) Excellent writing/communication skills

Recommended additions so far:

8) Connected (great one!)
9) Passionate

What else should be on this list? Please add in comments.

Without giving away all the details, I need someone to build the following;
 
1. Simple (aesthetically pleasing) web page to capture user input strings;
2. Use those strings to create a search.twitter API query;
3. Capture and authenticate Twitter credentials (no oAuth)
4. Display formatted results of that query @ unique domain structured /username/queryname
5. Allow for tweeting of shortened URL (bit.ly) to that query (link to twitter with pre-formatted tweet ready to hit send)
 
Please email me using contact info at right if you are interested. I'm estimating 2-4 hours of coding time. Not a huge project, but my team is busy developing a new product. Thanks!
 
Justyn