Twitter Lists appeared last Friday, right before the weekend when many people tend to take a break from their computers. But that didn’t stop plenty of us from playing with the new feature and creating our Lists.

Based on the tweets I’ve seen, and some early posts on the topic, some are already wondering if Lists will lead to competitiveness or a way to “judge influence.” A.J. Kohn of Blind Five Year Old believes that Twitter promotes competitiveness and comparison by including “listed” as one of the three big metrics on each profile page, right after “following” and “followers.” Similarly, Chris Brogan believes Lists promote exclusion, rather than inclusion.

I believe it would serve Twitter users better to leave that off, or at least only make it visible to the user and no one else. Come on, admit it. When you see someone with a “listed” number of over 100 and yours is only 20, it evokes not-so-happy feelings. Lists are supposed to help us better organize our data for easier information retrieval, not to create a popularity contest or stroke egos.

Do Twitter Li