Twitter lists

I’ve spent the last few years working with online communities and collaboration technologies, and have come to expect to be able to collaborate with people when using online social tools. As a result, I wish that Twitter lists were more collaborative. Right now, Twitter lists and accounts have a one-to-one relationship. I create a list, and I’m the only person who can edit it. I started thinking about this limitation when Rael Dornfest created his Portland Food Cart list. I’m a huge fan of the Portland food cart scene, so I decided to follow his list instead of creating yet another one. The downside was that as there were some food carts missing from his list, I needed to send @replies to Rael to get him to add them — I couldn’t just add them myself.

The collaboration features that I propose would allow the owner of each list to open them up to allow collaboration/editing from other people. The list owner could always make tweaks, revert changes and have the final say on changes made by other users.

My wish list for Twitter lists includes:

• Open lists: These lists would be open for anyone to edit, and would be a great way for people to add themselves to, say, a conference attendee list or to collaborate on lists of industry experts. To cut down on spam edits, moderation features would be a nice addition.
• Lists open to the people I follow: Anyone that I follow could contribute to my list. This is probably the option that I would use most often. Since I only follow people that I already know, this would be a great way to collaborate while automatically reducing the amount of spam entries added to a list.
• Specific people can edit a list: In the case of the food cart list, Rael could open it up to a few specific people who are passionate about the Portland food cart culture and have those people help him maintain it.
• Copying/cloning: This would be similar to how Yahoo Pipes lets you clone another user’s pipe as a starting point for something that you’ll repurpose for your needs. If someone has the start of a great list, but with a few things that I don’t like, I’d want to be able to copy it and add or delete people from it as necessary.

I’ve focused my wish list around community and collaboration features. What’s on your wish list for Twitter 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 Lists Identify Influencers?

By now, most of you know that having thousands of followers doesn’t automatically mean you’re a celebrity or authority. “A Twitter account with 100 engaged followers is much more influential than one followed by thousands of disengaged users,” writes Todd Zeigler in Bivings Report. “I would argue that getting added to a list is a bigger deal than simply getting someone to follow you.”

I disagree with the latter statement. First, some of us follow hundreds or thousands of people. It’ll take time for us to sort them into our Lists. Second, people create Lists for different reasons. Sure, some will create Lists to identify their favorite tweeters and thought leaders. But many more — from what I see so far — create Lists based on topics. Third, it works two ways. You can add someone to a list without following them back, and you can follow someone without listing them.

Stop Studying the Numbers

Not so long ago, people put a high value on the number of followers a person had on Twitter. Since then, most of us figured out that a person can artificially boost that number without being an authority or influencer.

Lists are new to all of us. Obviously, people with loads of followers tend to have a higher number for “listed.” Like Kohn, I think Twitter didn’t do us a favor of adding the “listed” number because it takes the attention away from better information management and sharing and moves the focus toward popularity.

An obsession over the number of followers does you no good. They might not be listening to you. Instead, focus on joining conversations, listening to others, sharing valuable resources and helping each other. Make Twitter work for you — your way.

What do you think of Twitter Lists so far?

I’ve created four lists: Marketing, PRmedia (public relations pros and others who work with media), WEP (writer, editor and publisher) and DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth). They’re all public, so anyone can see them. You can also create private lists for your eyes only.

You can check out my lists to see who’s in them, and “Follow the list.” This adds my list to yours, but you won’t be able to edit it. You can also unfollow my list anytime. It’ll take me a while to get everyone on my lists, but it’ll be good to use that instead of Hootsuite’s groups, which only allows you to add 50 people per group.

Here’s how to create a new list:

1. Sign in Twitter (obviously)
2. Click “New List” in your Twitter sidebar. (Screen shot above.)
3. Enter a name for the list. (See next screen shot.)
4. Select Public or Private, depending if you want to share your list or not.
5. Click Create List.

Here’s how to add people to the list:

1. Go to a person’s page either by searching, entering URL or clicking the name from within Twitter.
2. Click Lists.
3. Select the checkbox(es) to add the person to list(s).

That’s it. If you’re looking at a user and decide to create a new list, you can do that using the “Add People to Your List” steps. In the Lists popup, there’s an option for “New List.” You can access your lists on your Twitter.com home page. Click the list to see the latest tweets and it turns down the Twitter volume for you!

Here’s a closed-captioned screencast on how to create lists:

You can do so much with these lists. Create lists consisting of:

• Competitors
• People in your industry
• Clients
• Prospects
• Topics (writers covering specific beats can create topics with these beats for access to resources)
• Friends
• Fun (we all need a laugh)
• News
• RSS Reader replacement: Use Twitter Lists instead of Google Reader.

Go crazy! Oh, and if you want to add us to your list, we’re @webworkerdaily.

How do you like the List feature? How do you use it?