who to follow

From IndieWeb


who to follow (AKA people to follow or recommended users) is a feature on a site that suggests people or other accounts to follow, likely using a recommendation engine.

IndieWeb Examples

None so far.

Prior independent examples of an early but limited type of this functionality can be seen in the early use of blogrolls. For some ideas and prior artwork, see also blogroll#Brainstorming.

Silo Examples

Facebook

Facebook shows (in a sidebar) a "PEOPLE TO FOLLOW" box with face, name, job title / org, number of friends that are following, and a "Follow" button, e.g. (both Aaron Parecki and Tantek Γ‡elik have seen this particular recommendation when using FB):

facebook-20150530-151302.png

Twitter

in Twitter profile sidebar

Twitter shows a "Who to follow" box in the sidebar when logged in and viewing someone else's profile. E.g.


If you click the "View all" link it goes to a whole page of follow suggestions:

Twitter who to follow page

Here's a screenshot of Kartik Prabhu's "Who to follow" page on Twitter. Note Twitter shows only specified full names in the "Followed by ..." text. This can look interesting when users change their display name for various reasons, e.g. the "⚑️" that is a reference to David Bowie.

Bluesky

Bluesky recommends people to follow when you click on the "Search" tab in the web and mobile applications.

See Also