Comments on: Twitter Lists: Changing Everything about Twitter

By: Daily Digest for December 15th | My Blog

Daily Digest for December 15th | My Blog — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 12:53:09 +0000

[...] Shared Twitter Lists: Changing Everything about Twitter. [...]

By: Tsudo

Tsudo — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 03:30:54 +0000

Great post on lists. You raise some good points that we need to consider as we explore this feature.

Lists have dramatically increased my ability to listen on twitter and this is a wonderful thing.

I do agree that creating my own lists is preferable to following others. I use lists created by others to help build my lists but I want to curate my own stream.

In addition lists allow me to unfollow certain folks and keep them in a list to help segment my stream.

Good post.

By: rjamestaylor

rjamestaylor — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:32:35 +0000

You’re correct – I no longer see which lists I’m on that the list curator set as private. I really thought I did at one point (I tested using multiple accounts with the early Twitter List roll out). Thanks for correcting me!

By: Alex Schleber

Alex Schleber — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 23:29:29 +0000

Some good points about the deeper consequences of lists. You are right that this has been a rather important shift, and that the wider thinking still has to catch up with all of the implications, even though I don’t view it quite as negatively as you.

Any expectation of privacy on Twitter on an open account was always unrealistic. And “security by obscurity” (i.e. previously not being named as member of an organization) was no real help against potential disclosure issues. In a SOCIAL NETWORK, people by definition are going to talk, and unless you purposefully anonymize your entire account, your background was always open to insight to some extent.

This is why companies badly need enlightened social media policies (a la ,of all places, IBM).

BTW, I was pretty sure, but just tested again with a second account, that adding someone to a private list does NOT show up on the “addees” end. That would frankly defeat the purpose of a private list. Maybe correct that.

By: Torsten Koerting

Torsten Koerting — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 22:41:52 +0000

Great post and well researched.
So what did Twitter list changed for me:
1) help me to structure the ones I am following
2) … Without even following them
3) understand how I am placed in the Twitter market and how ‘torsten koerting’ is been understood to provide value
4) follow otherones list in special areas and to learn from experts without collecting and identifying them myself
5) a great way to link to a pool and area of interest in my blogpost
6) quickly research on a specifc topic

these are the key areas where Twitter lists provide great value.

Torsten
http://www.torstenkoerting.com

By: @meanrachel

@meanrachel — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 21:21:26 +0000

cool beans.
my take about why lists are important: no one really cares how many followers someone has anymore. lists are the new barometer for an individual or company’s market share and/or influence on twitter.

By: rjamestaylor

rjamestaylor — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:20:34 +0000

A tool I didn’t mention but use is http://listimonkey.com/ — think of Google Alerts for Twitter Lists. With ListiMonkey one selects a public list made by anyone and supplies an email address to receive a digest of tweets from users on that list. Can’t keep up with the real-time stream? Have Listimonkey email you digests for your review on your own schedule.

Implication: archiving the activity of Twitter users on a list is simple and off-line. Thus if a tweet is deleted from Twitter, it still exists, potentially, in someone’s inbox. Even more reason to be aware of Twitter Lists!

By: Forrest W. Kobayashi

Forrest W. Kobayashi — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:56:31 +0000

Thanks for this awesome post, Robert. Not many people have taken the time to do a comprehensive post on Lists yet!

By: Eugene Mandel

Eugene Mandel — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:16:00 +0000

James,

Very interesting post.

Unlike the self-description in the bio, lists provide an insight into how others view you. We created a visualization of this: http://www.mustexist.com/list_tags/rjamestaylor

Do you think lists can replace following with a new paradigm? I’ve been trying this as a personal experiment: http://shadesmodel.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/list-dont-follow/

-Eugene

By: Jos Duerinck

Jos Duerinck — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 06:10:44 +0000

Nice article about Lists, we like the feature a lot. But, what wonders me and seems unlogical, when you unfollow a tweep, that they still are indicated on the lists, I think it’s more logical when you unfollow a tweep, that he is also automatically purged/removed from your lists. Also, a RT button should become available on list entries, now, we have to favorite tweets from lists, go to favorites and RT those. And on how many lists can a tweep listed by others in total? Is there also a limit? I use also often TuneIn.com and it seems that there Channels is a bit the same as Lists in twitter, I don’t know what the real difference is so far. The twitter lists menu to attach/unattach with those checkboxes is really nice, something I miss in TuneIn. On the other hand, what I miss most on twitter, is that menu when clicking the avatar directly at that place and a follower flag at the twavatar level, so that we don’t have to switch each time back and forth to the tweeps tweets screen for finding out via actions ‘message’ if it’s a follower and not and for attaching him/her to a list. Also, when I was twitter, I limits the number of tweets a tweep can store to 1000 and purge the oldest ones when >1000. Also, they need to cleanup the dead wood, the nonused tweeps > 6 months and those without tweets from your follower lists and from the data cloud of twitter. Then it’s a living active community of tweeps, in place of all those who are serveral months and even years no longer is use. Certainly in Find People, you find a lot of garbage of users no longer active. In those domains twitter needs improvements too. Tell it to others in development team there. Thx a lot.