Find People on Twitter

Millions of people use the popular social networking site Twitter, most likely including some of your friends, family, coworkers, etc. Finding people to follow is easy to do, and should be the first step once you've created your account.

Steps

Finding a Specific Person

  1. Navigate to https://twitter.com/ and sign-in to your account. If you have not already created an account, read our great article about how to Join Twitter.
  2. Know the person's name or username. Twitter offers two different identifiers for an account -- usernames and real names. Usernames are marked by the '@' symbol. Real names are the real name of the person.
    • If the person you are trying to find has a common name, it will be more efficient to know their username. Usernames are unique to each user while real names are not.
  3. Use the search bar. Enter the username or real name of the person you wish to follow via the Twitter search bar. The search bar should be located in the upper right corner of the window, to the left of your profile picture. Enter a name or username, then click the magnifying glass to search. You will see 6 different options for specifying search results.
    • Top: This will include a combination of the most popular accounts, tweets, photos, and videos that include your search term.
    • Live: This shows a livestream of tweets with your search term. For example, if you searched "Bill Clinton," it will show the most recent tweets, photos, or videos about Bill Clinton.
    • Accounts: Shows a list of accounts with your search term as the real name. The most popular accounts will be ordered first. If you are searching for a celebrity, like Hugh Jackman, the first account will likely be the actual account. However, if you are searching for a friend named John Smith, you may need to browse through the accounts to find the right John Smith. This is when you should search using the @username, instead.
    • Photos: Shows a list of photos related to your search term.
    • Videos: Shows a list of videos related to your search term.
    • More Options: Lets you narrow your search by location or from people you follow.
  4. Enter their username into the URL bar. If you know the person's username, this is the most efficient way to get to their Twitter page. Add "/username" without the quotes (following www.twitter.com) to be directed to the user's feed. For example, if you want to go to Bill Clinton's page, add his username (@billclinton) to twitter.com. The URL should look like this: https://twitter.com/billclinton.
  5. Find a celebrity. Celebrities do not always use their real name on Twitter. Occasionally, their real name will be already used. In this case, it may be best to search for them by their username. Look around the web for the correct username.
    • The verified account will also have a checkmark next to it.

Browsing for Friends

  1. Browse by email. After searching for someone, click on the "Find Friends" link on the left side of the page, beneath the "Who to Follow" header. You'll be able to browse email contacts that use Twitter, and will be linked to their pages to follow them. Simply log into your email account (Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Outlook, AOL Mail), then select which contacts you would like to follow.
    • You can log in to an e-mail account that was not used to originally create the account. Logging in and importing the contacts will also help Twitter suggest people for you to follow.
  2. Browse Twitter's suggestions. Based off browser history, e-mail contacts, Facebook friends, and other sources, Twitter can make incredibly high-quality suggestions for those to follow. After searching for someone, Click the "View All" link next to the "Who to Follow" header on the left side of the webpage. Or, just go to this link: https://twitter.com/who_to_follow/suggestions. Click on a username to check out their profile or to follow them.



Tips

  • Many of the steps above can be applied to finding business and celebrity accounts to follow as well.
  • It can be difficult to find the actual account of a celebrity. If the celebrity is well-known enough, Twitter will put a check next to the profile name of the actual account of the celebrity.

Warnings

  • Avoid sending requests to follow people you don't know. While not terribly harmful, they will most likely ignore your request, or if you persist, block you from adding them.

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