Jousting in the Twitter Lists

Friday, October 30. 2009

Jousting in the Twitter Lists

Twitter has released the ability to make lists of people, ie group 'em in convenient monotypes:

We’re putting the finishing touches on our new Lists feature and we're really excited about the folks who have already taken a lot of time creating awesome lists. From the @time list of funny people to your own list of people who make you laugh—it's easy to see how this feature increases discovery and adds value in lots of ways.

Lists also make it easier to curate tweets into meaningful real-time experiences on your own sites via the Lists API. Media companies are already taking advantage: for example, check out @huffingtonpost's use of the Lists API in their World Series coverage.

@Bettydraper/rolodex: A collection of fan-created Mad Men characters
@NYTimes/staff: The colorful people behind The Gray Lady
@BBC/radio1-1xtra: Turns out BBC radio hosts are a chatty bunch
@Joesebok/poker: A list of professional poker players by a professional poker player
@jayrosen/mindcasters: A list of the some of the best new media thinkers by an NYU professor
@Stocktwits/suggested: A list of traders for stock market fanatics

We’ve been taking our time rolling out the lists feature to make sure things go smoothly and developers have a chance to begin experimenting with our Lists API. For example, TLISTS will provide tools to efficiently build, measure and distribute Lists, while Listorious hosts a directory of 'awesome lists' on Twitter.

The really, really interesting thing is that you can have Public lists. Anyone can curate and publish these lists, and put anyone else on it. So if you have an idea for one, just click "New list" in the sidebar of your Twitter account and you're on your way. However. the above options don't go far enough - I see the opportunity not just for extending one's egosystem, but for more radical waggish fun and mayhem - so the suggestions below probably go too far

@Hotornot/Twittergals - the jolly grouping of all those Ladies (or men, we ain't sexist here) and the opportunity to decide who are not a perfect "10"
@Bastardswhof*ckedmeover - just as it says on the tin. Build your own antisocial network, hours of entertainment for the whole extended digifamily
@Jerkswhotalkaboutlunch - for people who like talking about what they had for lunch on Twitter.
@CoffeeteableTwitterList - Your List of People you Should Be Following so other people think you are UberCool
@PeopleI'msuckingupto - Would be even better if you could auto-retweet them all
@Peoplewhoowememoney - put your debtor list online (hat tip Steve Lawson)
@Iwouldn'tfollowthesewankersifmylifedependedonit - "unlists" (hat tip JP Rangaswami)

Blimey, that was quick.......

Now, apparently you can exeunt yourself from being on these sorts of lists by blocking them yourself, but that seems time consuming for the poor listee, so no doubt some more sophisticated controls will have to emerge.

Ah - I see the List Facility is also on my account.......... I may be gone some time, I have some listbots to write

Posted by Alan Patrick in Microblogging / Unified Messaging at 21:22 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

8928 hits

< Stuff White People Don't Like #2 - Real Geeks (#CabinetForum Redux) | Beyond Freeconomics? >

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

I'm betting that the feature (just like all other features) will get bastardized in a very short space of time - http://www.shootingatbubbles.com/index.php/2009/10/30/the-lifecycle-of-cool-twitter-ideas/

#1 Steven Hodson (Homepage) on 2009-10-30 22:34 (Reply)

The fight to pwn the top Suggested User List lists will be ongoing

#2 alanp on 2009-10-31 11:28 (Reply)

The many non-focused tweets will rapidly or immediately render many "focused" Twitter lists dysfunctional for most people who thought the lists might actually solve a problem or help them achieve something.

So unless you're prepared to do a lot more work, it'll be just like Twitter in microcosm

Where there might be some value is for brands and organisations monitoring lists that reflect key verticals. But again, even here there will be huge amounts of noise and spam to filter out, and there are already monitoring tools and agencies doing this with the broader data stream Twitter produces, so how is this helping?

Brands could set up lists for CRM or campaigns, but will still miss the majority of relevant tweets not in that list, so it would be more like a focus group.

Granted people can add and remove streams from their lists, but this type of curation is still based on a machine-like view of value and culture and no match for complex human needs and priorities. For that, you're better off with the much larger universe of properly facilitated online communities.

Ironically, with lists you'll get more focused information from subscribing to "broadcast" providers, for eg. a collection of publications' Twitter feeds. I think dating/flirting lists are another likely short-term winner

Yes, I hope there will be some more useful lists created that contradict this. But I wouldn't put too much store by it.

#3 Deirdre (Homepage) on 2009-10-31 12:09 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above:
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry