The Who-To-Follow System At Twitter: Strategy, Algorithms, And Revenue Impact

The who-to-follow system at Twitter is an algorithmic data product that recommends accounts for Twitter users to follow. Building the system involved algorithmic, analytics, operational, and experimental challenges; operations research and analytics techniques played a key role in resolving these challenges. This product has had significant direct impact on Twitter's growth and the quality of its user engagement, and has also been a major driver of revenue. More than one-eighth of all new connections on the Twitter network are a direct result of this system, and a substantial majority of Twitter's revenue comes from its promoted products, for which this system was a foundation. To place this contribution into perspective, Twitter is now a publicly traded company with a market capitalization of more than $30 billion, projected annual revenue of close to $1 billion, and more than 240 million active users.