TMO Quick Tip - Twitter 101: Finding Friends with Twitter Blocks

by , 7:30 AM EST, February 11th, 2008

The social networking and mini-blog Web site Twitter is great for keeping up with your friends, but it also is a great tool for finding other people that share similar interests. The trick is finding out who those people might be. Instead of sifting through the sea of millions of Twitter users hoping to stumble across the right people, try using Twitter Blocks instead.

Twitter Blocks gives you a graphic representation showing all of the people you are tweeting with and all of the people they have been tweeting with, too. Rolling over a block will reveal who the tweeter was, and clicking the block will zoom in to show what they said.

Roll over a block to see who is tweeting with whom.

After you zoom in on a block, you can load that person's friends and see a new Twitter Block with all of their activities and friends tweets. You can also jump directly to a user's profile so you can learn a little more about who they are.

Since the people you follow likely interest you in some way, there's a chance that the people they follow might be interesting as well. Twitter Blocks makes finding those people much easier thanks to its graphic representation that shows just how each person and the tweets they make are related.

Jeff Gamet is TMO's Morning Editor and Reviews Editor. He lectures, teaches and speaks on Mac OS X and design-related topics, and is the author of The Designer's Guide to Mac OS X from Peachpit Press.

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