How to find the right people on X

1. Decide who you're looking for

"Interesting people" is too vague for search to help with. Write down three things before you start:

• The topic, in the words people actually use. Practitioners say "RAG pipeline", not "AI knowledge retrieval".
• The type of person: practitioners who post their work, journalists, researchers, local businesses, event organisers.
• The signal of quality you care about: original posts rather than reposts, replies from peers, links to their own work.

Each of these maps onto something X search can filter for, as the next sections show.

2. Use the People and Lists tabs in search

After any search on X, the results are split into tabs, including People and Lists. People matches names, handles and profile text, so try the words someone would put in their bio, like "epidemiologist" or "Rust developer". Lists is often more useful. A public List called "Climate scientists" made by someone in that field is a ready-made, human-curated directory.

3. The Advanced Search form

If you'd rather not memorise operators, X's Advanced Search form at x.com/search-advanced builds them for you. You need to be signed in. It has fields for exact phrases, any-of words, excluded words, hashtags, language, accounts (from, to, mentioning), engagement minimums and date ranges. Fill in a few fields, run the search, then look at the search box. It shows the operator query the form wrote, which is a quick way to learn the syntax.

4. Search operators that work (tested October 2026)

Operators are short commands you type straight into the search box. A space means AND, OR must be uppercase, and a leading minus excludes something. X doesn't officially document most of these and can change them without notice. The table below reflects independent live tests published in October 2026.

Two gotchas: a date operator on its own isn't a search (pair it with a word or an account), and reposts now show up in from: searches by default. If you use the official X API rather than the search box, some names differ. For example, the API uses min_likes: instead of min_faves:.

5. Recipes for finding people

Find practitioners who post original work on a topic

"vector database" -filter:replies -filter:nativeretweets min_faves:50 lang:en

This keeps original posts that other people found worth liking. The authors are your shortlist. Raise or lower min_faves to suit how niche the topic is.

Find people who write threads, not just one-liners

"lessons learned" filter:self_threads min_faves:100 within_time:30d

See who an expert actually talks to

from:theirhandle filter:replies

The people an expert replies to are often their peers, and they're usually a better follow list than X's suggestions.

Find people who share their own work

url:github.com "I built" -filter:nativeretweets

You can swap the domain for arxiv.org, substack.com or youtube.com, depending on what kind of creator you want.

Find the best posts from an account before you follow

from:theirhandle min_faves:500

6. Lists: still the best discovery tool on X

Lists are curated groups of accounts with their own timeline. They do two jobs: they help you find people, through other people's curation, and they help you organise the people you've found.

• Discover lists. Open Lists from the menu and scroll past your own lists to the suggestions. You can also search a topic and open the Lists tab.
• Mine a good list. Open a list's members. If a list made by a respected person in your field has 80 members, you've just found 80 candidates.
• Make private lists. A private list is visible only to you, and members aren't notified when you add them. It's ideal for "people to watch" without following everyone.
• Pin lists. You can pin up to five lists as swipeable tabs on your home timeline.
• Search inside a list. Combine list: with keywords, e.g. list:1234567890 "hiring", to search only what those members post.

7. Communities are gone. Here's what replaced them

X shut down Communities in 2026. Its head of product said they were used by less than 0.4% of users but generated about 80% of spam reports. The final shutdown came after a migration window that ran to 30 May 2026. In their place:

• Joinable group chats in XChat. Former community admins were pointed to group chats with public join links that can be shared and pinned on the timeline. If a group you used to follow had an admin, check their pinned post for a new link.
• Custom Timelines (Premium). These are topic feeds, curated by Grok, that you can pin to your Home tab. X launched them with around 75 topics. They surface posts by topic rather than by account, which makes them a good place to spot people you don't yet follow.

If you relied on Communities for discovery, the closest substitute is a well-chosen public List plus a saved search.

8. Finding people near you (location tips)

This was Tweetmondo's original purpose, so here's the honest picture. Twitter stopped letting people tag a precise location on posts in 2019, and very few posts carry location data now. In independent tests in October 2026, the classic location operators (near:London within:10km and geocode:) returned nothing. Don't rely on them. What still works:

• Search the place as a word. People mention their city in posts and bios: "in Manchester" (meetup OR hiring OR event) within_time:30d.
• Use local hashtags and event tags. Conferences, meetups and city hashtags gather local people in one search.
• Search the People tab with place and role. Try "Bristol designer" or "Lisbon founder". The free-text location on a profile often matches.
• Start from local institutions. Local newspapers, universities, councils and venues often keep public Lists of local voices, or have staff you can browse.
• Use a bio search tool. Followerwonk, now part of Fedica, searches profile bios with location filters. It's a paid feature, but it's the nearest thing to the old map.
• Ask Grok, then verify. Grok can search live posts, so "who posts regularly about the Leeds tech scene?" can produce a starting list. Open every profile it names to check it's real and active.

9. Vet an account before you follow

• Do they post original content, or mostly reposts? Use from:handle -filter:nativeretweets.
• Do respected peers reply to them? Use to:handle.
• Do their links go to their own work, such as a repo, a paper or a portfolio?
• Is the account active? Check the dates on their latest posts.
• Be wary of follower counts on their own. They can be bought, and they say little about relevance.

10. Tools that help

A few tools make this faster: X Pro for watching several searches and lists side by side (now Premium+ only), Followerwonk for bio search, and Grok for live research. We cover them, and the other X tools we checked, in our curated guide to AI tools for X. If you're a creator looking beyond X, AI Flood has a separate list of AI tools picked for creators.

Quick checklist

1. Write down the topic, the type of person and your quality signal.
2. Search the topic, then open the People and Lists tabs.
3. Run one or two operator recipes and shortlist the authors.
4. Add them to a private List rather than following everyone.
5. After two weeks, follow the ones whose posts you actually read.

Sources: X's Advanced Search help page; independent operator tests published 19 to 22 October 2026; TechCrunch (23 April 2026) on the Communities shutdown; Social Media Today (22 April 2026) on Custom Timelines. X changes search behaviour without notice, so an operator working today isn't a guarantee for tomorrow.