Twitter Lists Make Twitter More Useful

Posted on October 17, 2009

Twitter Lists are great new way to organize information and follow tweets on Twitter. The feature makes Twitter a lot more useful. It works best for categories. For example, you can create a list of your favorite news sources or a list for a specific subject, such as blogging, social media, food, music or tech. Information junkies are going to love this feature. You can also go local and follow your favorite restaurants, hangouts and local news sources.

You can only create 20 lists but that doesn't really matter because you can go and follow cool lists that other people have made. One of the best features of Twitter Lists is that you can add people to your lists that you are not following. You can add someone to one of your lists by using a tab that appears next to their profile. When you hover over the tab your Twitter Lists appear and you can check the box(es) next to the List you want to add them to.

The lists themselves are very useful. They contain all the tweets from the twitterers you have added to the list. The lists appear on the right side of your page underneath the search box. When you click on one of the lists the tweets from the members in the list show up on your homepage. Each list also has its own page.

Here's a short summary of some of the features:

You can make up to 20 lists.
Each list can have up to 500 twitterers.
Lists can be private or public.
You can add people to lists even if you don't follow them.
You can follow lists made by other people.
You can change the title of a list at any time.
The url path for lists is twitter.com/username/nameoflist
Twitter shows you who is following each list.
Twitter shows you how many lists you are listed on (next to your followers/following count)

I have made a bunch of lists already including one for Twitter apps and tools as well as lists for blogging, celebrities, tech, tv and movies, etc. I'm also following some lists others have made including a Metaverse list, iPhone list, nonprofits list and Australia list. I'm also following some company group lists, such as the Twitter list, TechCrunch list, Mashable list, ReadWriteWeb list - these lists contain Twitterers that all blog/work for the same company. You can see my lists and the lists I am following here.

Note: You can't see any of the lists if Twitter has not yet activitated Twitter Lists for your account. Hopefully, they will do this soon.

For those who have Twitter List Blindness here's an example of a Twitter list called "Tech".