Twitter is testing a new feature: “Jump to someone you follow”.

After months of changing very little to the online interface, Twitter has recently made a number of changes: color differences to emphasize #hashtags and @messages, fewer buttons, and email notification of favories.

The change I just noticed is perhaps the most unique I have seen.  While looking at who one Twitter account was following (this is an account I didn’t follow), I saw a weird icon in the upper right hand corner of the page.

When I rolled over it, it changed color and said “Jump to someone you follow“.

When I clicked the icon, it loaded a random “this account follows” page.  The icon was still there, so I kept clicking it and it kept going to a random different accounts (all of whom I follow), and I was shown the most recent tweets of who they were following.

I kept clicking on the icon and went through about ten different pages.  There didn’t seem to be any type of weighting to who it shows.  It took me to the page of an account that was just started this week, to company accounts, friend accounts, and some more prominent accounts like @msuster shown above.

My initial thought is that Twitter is showing this icon when they think you are most likely looking for new people to follow.  By looking at a page that shows who an account follows, they figure that you are in follow mode and so this new icon adds a bit of randomness or in the best case, serendipity.

This random selection of different pages reminded me of StumbleUpon.  Obviously all the pages are still on the Twitter site, but Twitter might finally be drawing from other successful social media sites for new features.

If you want to try to replicate finding this new feature, I was using Google Chrome when I noticed this change.  Here is a link that should get you started: http://twitter.com/#!/llsocial/following

What do you think of this new feature? Is it really helpful? As Twitter keeps trying out new features, I would love to get your feedback.