{"id":9169,"date":"2011-01-29T12:21:35","date_gmt":"2011-01-29T20:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=9169"},"modified":"2019-12-23T15:39:39","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T23:39:39","slug":"twitters-weird-email-search-not-findable-except-that-they-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2011\/01\/29\/twitters-weird-email-search-not-findable-except-that-they-are\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter&#8217;s Weird Email Search: Not Findable, Except That They Are"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[]'><\/div>\n<p>While killing time the other day, I ran into a weird little &#8220;feature&#8221; on Twitter that, I have to admit, I don&#8217;t entirely understand.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Safari001.png\" alt=\"Twitter's FInd Friends\" border=\"0\" width=\"250\" height=\"230\" style=\"float:right;\" \/>As part of their new interface, there&#8217;s a tab at the top titled &#8220;Who to Follow&#8221;, when then has a tab called &#8220;Find Friends&#8221; that allows you to hook into your Gmail (or Yahoo, MSN\/Hotmail, AOL, or LinkedIn) address book to discover people that you might not know are already on Twitter. So far, so good.<\/p>\n<p>So, I pop my email address in, authorize with Gmail, and let Twitter think for a moment. After a moment of thinking, I get a long list of Twitter accounts that are associated with the email addresses in my address book (most of which I was already following). Once again, so far so good &#8212; this is all what I would expect to have happen.<\/p>\n<p>But as I scrolled down, things got a little more odd. I started getting hits for a bunch of people with the cryptic message, &#8220;This person is on Twitter, but isn&#8217;t yet findable by email. Let them know you&#8217;d like to follow them.&#8221; When I clicked the &#8220;Follow&#8221; button on a few of those entries, Twitter kindly let me know that it had sent a message to let them know I was interested in following them.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Safari002.png\" alt=\"Not Findable?\" border=\"0\" width=\"500\" height=\"230\" \/><\/p>\n<p>This morning, I got a note from one of the people behind those accounts letting me know that that account was unused. They were kind enough to forward the message that Twitter sends, however:<\/p>\n<p>On Jan 28, 2011 11:13 PM, &#8220;Twitter&#8221; <a href=\"&#109;&#97;&#x69;&#x6c;&#116;&#111;&#x3a;&#x64;i&#115;&#99;&#x6f;&#x76;&#101;&#114;&#x2d;&#x77;&#114;&#101;&#x6a;&#x6e;e&#101;&#114;&#x61;&#x3d;&#116;&#122;&#x6e;&#x76;&#121;&#46;&#x70;&#x62;z&#45;&#53;&#x35;&#x39;&#49;&#101;&#x40;&#x70;&#111;&#115;&#x74;&#x6d;a&#115;&#116;&#x65;&#x72;&#46;&#116;&#x77;&#x69;&#116;&#116;&#x65;&#x72;.&#99;&#111;&#x6d;\">&#x64;i&#115;&#99;&#x6f;&#x76;&#101;&#114;&#x2d;&#x77;&#114;&#101;&#x6a;&#x6e;e&#101;&#114;&#x61;&#x3d;&#116;&#122;&#x6e;&#x76;&#121;&#46;&#x70;&#x62;z&#45;&#53;&#x35;&#x39;&#49;&#101;&#x40;&#x70;&#111;&#115;&#x74;&#x6d;a&#115;&#116;&#x65;&#x72;&#46;&#116;&#x77;&#x69;&#116;&#116;&#x65;&#x72;.&#99;&#111;&#x6d;<\/a> wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Michael Hanscom (@djwudi) would like to follow your tweets (@&#8212;&#8211;) on Twitter.<\/p>\n<p>  Michael Hanscom knows your email address: @&#8212;&#8211;@&#8212;&#8211;.com. But Twitter can&#8217;t suggest you to users like Michael Hanscom because your account (@&#8212;&#8211;) isn&#8217;t configured to let users find you if they know your email address.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So here&#8217;s what I don&#8217;t understand. These accounts are set to hide their email address, and to <em>not<\/em> be searchable by email address. This is even mentioned twice, once in the listing after Twitter read through my address book, and again in the email sent out after I hit the &#8220;Follow&#8221; button. However, that&#8217;s exactly <em>how<\/em> I found the accounts: by their email address.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, Twitter isn&#8217;t showing me the account name, so I can&#8217;t follow directly. Instead, I have to send a request, and the account owner then has to approve (or disapprove) the request. It does, however, let me know that there is a Twitter account associated with that email address&#8230;which seems to run counter to the intent of the account owners who have set their accounts to <em>not<\/em> be findable by email address.<\/p>\n<p>Is this a bug? A feature? A privacy concern? Or is there something that I&#8217;m just not grokking, and this actually makes perfect sense and is how things should work?<\/p>\n<p>Anybody want to toss their two cents in the ring (yes, mixed metaphor, I know)?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is this a bug? A feature? A privacy concern? Or is there something that I&#8217;m just not grokking, and this actually makes perfect sense and is how things should work?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2038],"tags":[58,241],"class_list":["post-9169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","tag-internet","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}