Carsonified are helping us so it's going to be awesome. See you there!

Twitter trends began as a way to shed light on popular conversations. It's interesting to know that one topic can now spread across the world in real-time, and Trends help us discover which of those topics are paramount on a global scale.

Posted by @ at 2:22 PM

Hi, I'm Josh and I work in the product team at Twitter. One of the areas I'm working on is helping new users get started so they know how to find and discover what interests them. Today we're making the first of many changes here to help people ease into the twitterverse by finding and following accounts that interest them.

Two of the biggest challenges for new users have been finding accounts to follow that appeal to their interests, and finding their friends and colleagues who tweet. Over time, we've learned that by making suggestions of who to follow, we can help users get going more easily on Twitter. In our new design, we're taking some steps to continue to improve this process. Once a user signs up and selects what they're interested in, we show them some accounts that relate to that interest. Next, we help them find their friends and colleagues by checking their address books, and third we give them a chance to search for anyone we or they missed in this process.


We've found that the power of suggestion can be a great thing to help people get started, but it's important that we suggest things relevant to them. We've created a number of algorithms to identify users across a variety of clusters who tweet actively and are engaged with their audiences. These new algorithms help us group these active users into lists of users by interests. Rather than suggesting a random set of 20 users for a new user to follow, now we let users browse into the areas they are interested in and choose who they want to follow from these lists. These lists will be refreshed frequently as the algorithms identify new users who should be suggested in these lists and some that are not as engaging to new users will be removed. We also have a set of "Staff Picks" that are manually selected by Twitter employees as some of our favorites. Given the recent tragedy in Haiti, we've also created a special "Staff Picks for Haiti" to get updated news and content on what's happening there.

We're really excited about this change, and look forward to continually improving the experience for all users to discover the best content and get the most out of Twitter.

@ServeDotGov Twitter account and serve.gov site want to hear about your efforts. If you find a volunteer opportunity that interests you, go for it! Tweet about your experience as you learn about different ways to get involved, volunteer in your neighborhood or town, and be sure to add #MLKDay to spread the word.

International relief efforts are underway in Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince, after yesterday's devastating magnitude 7 earthquake. The atmosphere at Twitter HQ is heavy today and based on the Trending Topics an overwhelming number of Twitter users feel the same.

Easy Ways To Help
Many of us are wondering how we can contribute to the healing process. A few simple but effective ways to help have emerged.

• The American Red Cross allows anyone in the US to text HAITI to 90999 as an easy way to donate $10 to the recovery effort. The money is billed to your mobile phone account.
• Musician Wyclef Jean's Haiti-focused organization, Yele is also accepting text-message donations. To donate $5, text Yele to 501501 or visit the foundation's wyclef, and @The New York Times have spent time curating special lists to track events related to Haiti.

Newsworthy, funny, interesting, or important—tweets find their way into our lives more and more. Sawhorse Media is organizing the second annual official rules to learn how to vote.