Everyone is all abuzz about the new beta twitter feature, Twitter Lists. I personally think it’s great, both from an personal organization point of view (I’ve long wished to be able to see various views representing the people I follow so I can check in on certain topics), and also from a social perspective. Sharing lists on twitter should make it easier to find the type of people I’m looking for, since lists will be labeled in a categorical fashion most of the time.
Laura Spencer of Everything PR was a little worried that Twitter Lists would add complexity to the sleek and simple twitter interface, but found that it increased simplicity as she states in Twitter Lists — Great New Tool for Marketing Professionals or Yet Another Way to Waste Time?:
Although Twitter Lists initially seemed like it might be difficult to learn, I “mastered” the Twitter List concept in a little less than an hour — which is far less time than it took for me to master Facebook or LinkedIn.
Twitter Lists works a lot like an email folder. The feature allows you to set Twitter up to send all tweets from a single person, or a group of people, to a handy list. (In the case of Twitter, the tweets remain visible on your home page too.)
One difference between an email folder and a Twitter List is that other users can subscribe to your list and you can subscribe to the lists of other users. Most email systems do not allow users to subscribe to the folders of other users.
In fact, the subscription feature is where the Twitter List feature provides the most value to PRs and other marketing professionals. By carefully subscribing only to the lists of Twitter users who tweet the very best marketing and PR information a savvy marketer can “peek” at tweets that online marketing professionals are seeing.
Todd Zeigler of The Bivings Report believes that twitter lists will give a much clearer idea of who actually has influence on twitter. Zeigler says in Using Twitter Lists to Judge Influence :
I think Twitter Lists will end up helping separate the men from the boys when it comes to influence. In addition to seeing a Twitter users follower count, we can now see the number of other Twitter users who have added them to lists (example to the right). I would argue that getting added to a list is a bigger deal than simply getting someone to follow you.
People follow folks for lots of reasons. Out of courtesy. Because they like their avatar. To get them to follow them back. Adding someone to a list is more of an endorsement – you are saying this person is someone worth listening to. While I’m sure people will now work to game their “lists” number, in the short term I think it provides a really interesting insight into how respected Twitter users are.
I look forward to the final revision of Twitter Lists and expect it to change the landscape of Twitter in the best of ways.
What do you think of Twitter Lists?
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{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Phillip. I liked this article a lot. I agree, I think it will change the landscape of Twitter. Good job!
Thanks for including my post in your look at the new Twitter Lists feature.
Of course, the feature is still only in Beta – so, it will be interesting to see what the final version looks like and also what other enhancements Twitter comes up with in the future.
Brenda – Thanks I’m glad you liked the article. :)
Laura – I think it’ll be really interesting to watch where twitter lists go on their way out of beta and into production as well. :) What kind of enhancements to twitter would you like to see? I’d like to see tagging of posts community tagging even.