socialmedian: Twitter Lists Are Not About Discovery

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Submitted by Robdiana from blog

Nov 02, 2009

Summary

Twitter lists have been available now for a short while and the blogosphere has been talking about them constantly. We have heard the reasoning behind much of it, like aiding user discovery and having users define their own suggested users list. Maybe I am getting crankier as I age, but I call bullshit. This has nothing to do with discovery and everything to do with mass following, but first let’s look at what lists give you.

Private Lists

Private lists make sense for one particular reason, ease of use. When you start following more than 100 people, being able to track the conversations becomes unwieldy. Lists give you the ability to segment or categorize users into manageable chunks. Obviously, these are beneficial because each of the third party Twitter client have implemented them.

Previously, the problem with lists created within your Twitter client have not been very portable. TweetDeck implemented a server based synchronization process which helped a lot of people, but that was still within the world of TweetDeck. The other benefit of Twitter’s new private

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Comments (2)

Eyebee,

Nov 03, 2009

Lists act like a filter. When you filter content; break it into chunks, it's easier to digest. In each list I make I see some of the quieter Twitterers that I follow that I had perhaps forgotten about - even though I am a huge TweetDeck fan I don't sit with it open reading everything from all the people I follow all day of course, so things go by that I don't see.

Lists help me to see some of these Tweets at a glance, as in each list more people 'float to the top' like cream.

Robdiana,

Nov 03, 2009

Lists as your own content filter is a great idea, and why I am probably going to focus on private lists for my twitter account. The lists that TweetDeck and Brizzly have are probably most used in this way. I am sure there are other good uses of lists that I am missing as well.