Are you my friend? [Twitter response estimator]

With Twitters growing popularity, privacy has become a major concern for users wary of sensitive information falling in the wrong hands. A typical Twitter user carries hundreds of followers people who have subscribed to users twitter feeds. Our goal is to target followers that a Twitter user deems safe. Therefore, selecting followers with a closer relationship could help decrease the risk of sensitive information being sent to unknown people. We propose a privacy management system that helps a Twitter user restrict information to only certain followers based on the strength of their social tie. This system would incorporate two tools: the Exclusivity meter and the Twitter Response Estimator. The Exclusivity Meter employs user´s activity profile to guess similarities between users. Preliminary results have indicated that similarity in time and level of activity between user and follower does suggest a stronger social tie. The Twitter Response Estimator uses a measure of prestige to gauge the probability of response. When applied to a set of followers, the estimator separates real friends from recreational followers.