Google+ Unveils Suggested User List, Is This Twitter All Over Again?

Google+ unveiled its new Suggested User List last week, a move which emulates Twitter and has prompted criticism from Google's social network users.

The Suggested User List allows Google+ users to follow public posts from interesting and famous people ranging from celebrities, journalists, photographers and more, according to Google+.

The list is created, says Google's Bradley Horowitz, by gathering up interesting Google+ members based on their posts or reputation.

We've seeded the list with some folks we knew were either already creating great content on Google+, and/or were known to be interesting on other systems, Horowitz said in a post.

Populated by Paris Hilton, Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears, many say claim the list is mundane and not diverse, but Horowitz assures that the list also includes some interesting people excluded from Hollywood's lime light.

There's actually quite a lot of diversity on the initial list, and I expect that very few of us had discovered all of these folks, Horowitz said.

So how does one make themselves appearing interesting enough to become part of the list? For now, Google says it's relying on already established, known people to populate the list in its beta format.No one gets on the list 'automatically.' But again, in the early days, we do want to make it easy for users to connect with people they might find compelling.

Horowitz said the list is not concrete and can be added to or modified depending on the amount of interesting material posted on Google+. While one should not necessarily worry about missing a day posting, Horowitz said, Inclusion in today's list is no guarantee of placement into perpetuity. If they [on the Suggested List] prove not to be, justice will be served, and all will be right in the world.

The move from Google+ shortly after its initial release is not surprising, as Twitter did the same thing back in 2009 when it released its Who to follow list. Twitter claimed their list of celebrities to follow made Twitter more relevant and valuable to users, however many criticized Twitter for not including those with limited following, or rather, anyone who was not a celebrity.

However, emulating Twitter may not be a good move for the newly unveiled Google+, as many people are still scrambling to score an invite or figure out where to start using it, never mind create themselves a popular identity.

An editor at The Huffington Post, Craig Kanalley, said the Suggested User list on Google+ is going to alienate people and lead to an inevitable followers war that can hurt the health of the social network and inflate people's egos.

Kanalley claims the move by Google+ to add Suggested Users will not bridge the gap within the new social media network but rather will divide the famous and not-so-famous.As the famous get more followers, the non-featured fall farther behind, and a giant gap is created between the two. This is what happened on Twitter, Kanalley wrote.