FAQs about tailored suggestions
What are tailored suggestions?
Tailored suggestions are recommendations of accounts to follow that are most relevant to you. We are experimenting with tailored suggestions to make it easier and faster to get started on Twitter and find people who are talking about things you care about. This experiment helps you discover interesting accounts to follow on Twitter and brings you closer to the things you care about with just a few clicks or taps.
Where will I see tailored suggestions?
For new users, the first experiment with tailored suggestions will show you a list of accounts that we recommend you follow, alongside a timeline filled with Tweets from those accounts. If you’re part of the experiment, you’ll see a Twitter experience that’s relevant to you right when you sign up. (Of course, you can always choose to not follow the suggested accounts that don’t interest you.)
For current users, you may see tailored suggestions in “Who to Follow” so you can continue to find interesting and relevant accounts that are new to you.
To see which accounts we’d recommend for you, visit our preview page.
Why are tailored suggestions better?
Tailored suggestions are smarter and more relevant account recommendations that make it easier and faster for everyone to get started on Twitter. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people sign up for Twitter to get closer to the things they care about — friends, businesses, celebrities, news and information from all over. If you’ve used Twitter for a while, you know it can take some effort to create a timeline that really reflects your interests.
How do you find tailored suggestions for me?
We determine the people you might enjoy following based on your recent visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem (sites that have integrated Twitter buttons or widgets). Specifically, our feature works by suggesting people who are frequently followed by other Twitter users that visit the same websites.
How do you know which sites people have visited?
Buttons and widgets from various companies, including Twitter, are widely available across the web, and millions of people interact with them every day. When you visit pages with Twitter buttons or widgets, we receive information about the page visit so we can provide the content and functionality of our buttons or widgets. Like many web services, we use cookie technology to improve Twitter. A unique cookie, combined with the page visit information we receive, enables us to make tailored suggestions.
How long do you store this information?
To protect your privacy, we start the process of deleting your visits to pages in the Twitter ecosystem after a maximum of 10 days, and we keep tailored suggestions for you, as explained in our privacy policy. We may also keep aggregate information, such as the number of visitors to a page.
Can I turn off tailored suggestions and stop this collection?
Yes. We are committed to providing you with simple and meaningful choices about the information we collect to improve your Twitter experience. For those who don’t want to tailor Twitter, we offer several ways to turn off this collection:
- For users signing up to Twitter, you can uncheck the box that says Tailor Twitter based on my recent website visits.
- After signup, you can uncheck this box in your Security and privacy settings next to the heading Personalization.
- When you log out of Twitter, the information collection for the feature automatically stops until you log back into Twitter.
- Anyone can turn on the Do Not Track browser setting to stop the collection of information for the feature. Learn more about Twitter’s support for the Do Not Track preference, including how to turn it on.
- Anyone can also turn off the information collection for the feature from the preview page.
My account settings say that the personalization feature to tailor Twitter based on my recent website visits is not available to me. Why is this?
We're testing tailored suggestions now in a number of countries. If you're in Europe, the feature is not currently available to you, and your page visits are not collected to tailor your experience. Thanks for your patience.
I don’t see tailored suggestions on the preview page. Why not?
It may take a little while to see tailored suggestions on the preview page, especially if you recently logged out of Twitter or had the feature turned off.
What website visits does Twitter use for tailored suggestions?
Tailored suggestions are based only on visits to websites in the Twitter ecosystem (sites that have integrated a Twitter button or widget). We’ve not yet rolled out this feature to all countries or all clients, such as our mobile applications. In addition, our test does not currently collect information from visits to certain domains, such as .mil and .gov domains.
Do tailored suggestions just suggest the accounts of the websites I visited?
Tailored suggestions include accounts frequently followed by other visitors to the sites you’ve visited in the last ten days. Your suggestions might include some of the accounts maintained by the sites you recently visited because others who visited those sites are likely interested in those sites’ accounts. However, just because you visit cnn.com does not mean we will recommend @cnnbrk. Additionally, we’ve taken measures to protect against suggesting accounts that might be considered sensitive.
Does Twitter sell my information to third parties?
As we state in our privacy policy, this is not something we do, nor would we. Doing so would be counter to how we treat our users and their data.