Mountain View, California — Twitter is making it easier than ever to play a virtual game of six degrees of separation via a new “Connections” attribute that shows users what they have in common with others in the Twitterverse.
A new “Connections” element has been added to the right-hand column of the Twitter profile. When you visit another user’s profile, the Connections area displays two lists — “also followed by” and “you both follow” — that show your mutual Twitter connections. By clicking “more,” you can expand each list to view those connections.
Last year, Twitter rolled our “Followed By” and “You Both Follow” features, which showed up in different places on the Twitter profile. By contrast, Connections creates a single location for users to view multiple overlaps in their social graphs.
“Connections” scrapped “You Both Follow” section that the social-networking site unveiled last year. Shortly after, Twitter incorporated “Suggestions for You,” another feature that highlighted other users that might be of interest. However, there were some problems with the suggestions feature, requiring Twitter to suspend it periodically.
Twitter spokeswoman Carolyn Penner announced the launch of Connections through her Twitter feed on Wednesday. “From twitter.com, you can now view connections that you share w / a specific user when you go to that user’s profile,” she wrote.
The Connections attribute appears on the right-hand side of any user profile. It is a simple and subtle feature, but one that could help build relationships on Twitter. It lists the handles that you and another user are “also followed by” as well as who “you both follow.”
“We launched this to make it easy for you to see the connections that you have in common with other users,” said a Twitter spokesperson. “Essentially, we are focused on the mainstream market around the world. We want to make the Twitter experience easy and enjoyable.”
Furthermore, other social media and social-networking services, including Facebook, have similar variations of this feature, all intended to motivate users to expand their list of contacts from among shared “friends” or “followers.”
The more contacts someone has on services like Twitter and Facebook, the more occupied they are likely to become with that particular service, something that was a challenge for Twitter at one point early on, because many users signed up, looked around and did not come back.
According to the rep it is part of an experiment to open Twitter to everyone, not just early adopters. Most of Twitter’s popularity was achieved over the past two years. According to a recent study from social media analytics company Sysomos, 95 percent of Twitter handles have been created since January 2009.
Launched in July 2006, Twitter now has roughly 200 million registered users worldwide. About 110 million “tweets” are posted every day, 40% of which come from mobile devices, according to Penner.