Twitter lists are slowly appearing across Twitter and I have to admit to being quite pleased. What these allow you to do is add people to a list of your choosing (and in fact as many lists as you like) and it’s been something I’ve been after for quite some time. Admittedly you’ve been able to do something similar within Tweetdeck for ages but because I normally use Twitter through either the main website or Dabr I’ve never had the patience to really sit down an allocate people to a list. What I’ve been desperate for is the ability to either add someone to a list when I add them (so when I read their Tweets months down the line I don’t think “why am I following you? we have nothing in common”) or if they Tweet something that crosses into another of my interest areas I can add them there too. I view it as a way of expanding my knowledge of them and as you get to know more about people they become more than someone who likes Nokias and expand to be, lives local to me, likes theme parks and does web stuff.
I’m adding people to lists as they appear in my stream, so if you’re not listed yet don’t be offended. Not all of my list names are obvious either as this Tweet from @Allix shows. Depending on how the general feeling about lists goes with my friends I may end up turning them all back to private lists, except perhaps my sponsors list. I’m not sure if when you follow someone else’s list you automatically end up following everyone in the list. If that’s the case people may well prefer not to be included so as not to be mass added by spammers…..I need to dig a bit more on that I suppose.
For me the benefit in lists is personal, being able to find someone relevant to a question or a ponderance, or even something work related. My initial connection with them might be because they’ve appeared in one of my keyword searches or maybe because they shared a conversation with a friend but I like to follow people I’m interested in not just someone who shares a similar interest (not sure that makes sense but what I mean is just because you snowboard doesn’t mean I will find you interesting as a Twitterer). Therefore, just because someone I follow has categorized everyone they view as being a snowboarder, or a geek doesn’t mean I want to follow all of them. So I can see lists meaning that your follow list gets out of control and you lose the value. At this point who knows, it’ll be interesting to see how things go over the next few weeks.