What are Twitter lists?
Your main feed on Twitter shows everyone you are following. To make it so you are not overwhelmed by thousands of people tweeting at once, Twitter offers a way to select who you want to see at one time, namely, lists.
Are they useful?
Twitter lists are a tool. If you don’t need to put a nail in a wall, you’re probably fine without a hammer. If you are comfortable looking at your main feed to get the information you want off of Twitter, then you don’t need lists. If you feel like you’re missing important tweets, then it behooves you to make some lists.
From what I’m gathering, the value of Twitter lists is contingent upon two factors:
1) Where you use Twitter
If you’re using it on a browser, it’s sort of a pain to go to your lists. By then, you’re away from your feed, so you have to choose between a list and watching everyone you’re following.
If you tweet via TweetDeck or other clients, you can have different columns which you can then track easier than just one feed at a time.
2) How you follow people
If you’re only following the people you want to and they are not posting so much that you can’t track what they’re saying, then lists won’t help you as much.
Some people follow everyone that follows them. I’m sure that everyone has someone that they follow that they’re not totally interested in. If you have a lot of noise on your Twitter feed and don’t want to unfollow people, lists will definitely help with that.
How do you make a list?
Manually: Twitter has a post “How to use Twitter lists“, which tells you how to do it on the web, through Twitter.
Automatically:
Formulists is a solid, possibly limited tool. It creates smart (self-updating) Twitter lists for you, based on a variety of criteria that you can choose. When you first create a list, it offers five options:
- Organize Your Network
- Expand Your Network
- Track Followers
- Strengthen Social Ties
- Customize Existing Lists
Within those, there are even further options. Very cool if you want dynamic lists, but you only get two of them, unless you pay for a pro account or successfully invite people.
They also have a new feature called TweepShuffler, which offers a tag cloud (words of various sizes to show frequency of usage) so you can make lists based on what your tweeps usually talk about.
Twibes = Twitter tribes. You sign up by tweeting the twibe you want to be in, which then puts you on lists of any random assortment of Twitter people who theoretically share the same interests as you.
Listorious primarily defines itself as the best Twitter people search. You can also search for topics you might be interested in and follow the lists that they track, so it’s another good way to find lists that you don’t have to make yourself.
Another way to not have to create your own lists is to just follow lists you or your tweeps are already on. Just go to your main Twitter page or anyone’s profile and click ‘Listed’ to see the lists you or they are on. Check the list out and see if it’s an interesting feed. Then you can either track it on “Lists” via your main feed or on whatever Twitter client you add it to.
The other thing that’s not lists, but similar, is just following hashtags that you’re interested in. It’s useful for both Twitter events and beyond. There’s a reason people put #JustinBieber in their tweets.
So, even if you agree with this:
…hopefully you’ve learned a little something.
As always, feel free to add anything I might have missed.
