So you have joined Twitter and have no idea about whom to follow. Don't worry, there's an app for that.

The folks at Filter Squad Discovr have been forging a formidable reputation for themselves with their innovative "Discovr" apps that make searches appear more like family trees than lists. They had grabbed a fair deal of attention with apps like Discovr Music, Discovr Apps and Discovr Movies, and now they have brought the same formula to people, or to be more exact, to people on Twitter.


Discovr People is the perfect app for those who have just signed on to Twitter and do not really know whom to follow. All you need to do is open the app, and then type in the name of a person that you think you would like to follow--if you know their Twitter handle you will get better results, but even a plain name will often do the trick. Now, in most apps, doing so would have yielded you with a list of results in text. Discovr People, however, puts a spin on this--it shows you the results in the form of an atom-like structure, with the person you searched for in the middle and other people similar to them connected to them through threads. Tap on any of the people that are similar to the one you searched for (you can see their thumbnail images), and they in turn sprout threads to people who are similar to them, and so on and so forth, until you have an entire network or map of people who have a lot in common. It is like a massive DNA cell structure of people--quite a sight, believe you us, and a whole lot better than viewing a wall of text.


That in itself would have been handy for most people, but the app does much more. You can view the profile of any person who appears on the map by double tapping on their picture, which opens a page displaying their profile, recent tweets, mentions, connections, favourites and the people they are following. You can even choose to follow them from the app itself, reply or retweet their tweets or include them in a list. Speaking of lists, the app comes with its own list of people it recommends you follow and also allows you to create lists and even view those of which you are a member of.


Mind you, we were not too convinced by all the results the app threw up. In some cases, we found that it tended to call people to whom one had replied in the recent past as being similar to the people one was searching for, which is often not the case. For instance, when I searched for "Nimish Dubey", I was surprised to see the name of a person who had asked me about which tablet to purchase, pop up as being similar to me! Some will also argue that the app does not show enough similar people (you get to see five or six for each person), but we honestly found that to be more of a benefit than a problem--too much information can be a tad difficult to digest at times.


All said and done, Discovr People is perhaps the best app out there for those who are either new to Twitter or are always on the lookout for finding new people to follow. And like many other apps, it represents a triumph of interface and ease of use over pure data--there will be apps that will do more, but few that are as easy and--just as importantly--as much fun to use. If you have an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod touch) and are on twitter, this is one app you must download. It is well worth the 99 cent price tag.

Available from: iTunes App Store
Price: $0.99


--Nimish Dubey