Are you listing?

I'm not entirely certain what people will use the new Twitter lists service for, but I can of course speak for myself. Personally, I intend to use it as a kind of filtering tool, so that I can click on my specific list and hopefully see tweets that are grouped around a particular community of interest of practice.

In creating this app, Twitter are merely doing what other services have already done quite successfully, including TweepML and Listorious. The only difference is that Twitter has integrated this into the side bar of its own home page, so that you can see all the Twitter lists you have yourself created, and click on them to quickly access your lists. At the moment, Twitter is polling those it has selected to test out the Beta version of the app. The results of the poll show that 17% intend to use it to find and follow other like-minded people. To find out more and receive updates live from Twitter, you should follow Nick Kallen who is @nk

Some will complain that Twitter lists are elitist. Others will welcome them with open arms, pick up the ball and start running with it. Most I suspect will shrug their shoulders and say - so what? Until of course, they spot that they are included in other people's lists, and perhaps their following is increasing. Twitter lists I predict, will consolidate many people's following numbers, and coalesce communities of interest together in a more coherent and usable way. We shall see if I'm right. In the meantime, here's an excellent video showing how to use Twitter Lists.

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