Twitter Lists: Another Opportunity to Misuse Social Media
Twitter Lists
How many lists are you on?
Whose lists are you on?
Who else is on the list with you?
Aside from debating the overall functionality, those seem to be the questions regarding the new Twitter Lists function.
In other words it took just a couple of days for Twitter Lists to become just another way of measuring ourselves and each other. It’s still early and people are just starting to use this feature, but it’s disappointing to see so many rush to the bottom. Mark Drapeau voices a similar concern here.
Maybe it’s because I use Tweetdeck, but I’m having a hard time seeing the appeal of Twitter Lists. Yes, I do appreciate that my lists will come with me from computer to computer, but I can still only see one List stream at a time. Am I really going to toggle between my main stream and two or three lists, back and forth, back and forth? Rachel Sklar is also somewhat less than impressed with the whole operation.
Perhaps Twitter Lists aren’t intended for power users who are already using third-party interfaces, but rather for the more casual users. I’d be interested to see h0w sophisticated users with four or five lists are getting along with this new functionality.
My response is similar. When I heard about lists, my first response was not, “Oh boy! A new to reach out and stay connected!” but, “Oh crap, yet another time-suck I’ll be obligated to keep up with.”
My initial reaction to lists was very similar. However, I’ve found that lists enable me to unfollow many of the people/organizations I was previously following, thus eliminating the clutter of my stream.
I think that listing food carts is the best example of how the feature can be used beneficially. IE: All the food carts I previously followed no longer clog up my stream, and I only view their list when I’m actually looking for street food.
I’ve also used the functionality in this way with “find-a-job resources” and news accounts.
Additionally, I’ve started a list for people whose tweets I see to be of particular importance. (Ideally, everyone I follow would be of equal importance. But let’s face it, sometimes we feel obligated to follow colleagues, relatives, and friends that we would otherwise not.) It’s nice to be able to create a list of those whose tweets you don’t want to miss.