L.L. here. Making Twitter lists. And doubting their usefulness.
Like I’ve said elsewhere…
“My Social Media life is quite organic. I hang out with people I can put on lists (and I have already done it), but the truth is I like to see these people all in the same place…
…poets talking to businesspeople talking to Moms talking to authors talking to artists. You get the picture.
In fact, the birth of @tspoetry and Twitter parties happened as a result of a conversation between a teacher, an executive, a Social Media Director and an author (um, me!). I’m guessing that if I’d only been hanging out at a list (say, of ‘authors’), this might not have occurred. In fact, I’m 99% sure it wouldn’t have.”
So what about you? Do you Twitter list? What are the benefits? Down sides? Do you even know what a Twitter list is? 
Photo by Claire Burge. Used with permission. Post written by L.L. Barkat.
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I have 4 lists — but I can’t say I use them. I like the diversity of my primary follower list – work colleagues, authors, writers, moms, business people, entrepreneurs, pastors — and that’s where I generally stay. But I will say that with the advent of lists last week, the number of followers has surged. Others have noticed the same thing. (Of course, it may all depend upon what words you use. I used “beauty” in one tweet and was almost immediately followed by two beauty experts.) (And I’m stil not sure where the self-described vampire came from.)
hi l.l. !
you came up with a very good question.
actually..i just started two twitter lists. one of them is useful and the other is not.
the first list i tried, i labeled “poets” and it is not much use to me because almost all of the huge number (34) of people that i follow, and tweet often, are also poets.
now, the second list i made, labeled “school”, is very very useful. my daughter’s school has decided to twitter their updates now, so to catch the updates, i just go and check out the list, instead of scanning and fishing for the last tweet from them.
so their ya go…yes and no.
i am curious to see what others comment on this.
p.s. i love twitter parties !!!!!
Glynn, at least we know who to ask about the next lipstick then (you! For advice on clogs we go to Bradley ; – )
nAncY, too funny. Now, as to the Twitter-party-love… you are in luck. Next Tuesday: coming to a Twitter account near you.
I’m not making the lists, at least not now. Interestingly, this morning a ninth showed up on my Twitter page; this afternoon, it had high-tailed it. For a minute, I thought this must be what it’s like to be de-listed. In this case, no money lost because there were no stocks. I don’t even know whose that list was. I did click “Follow” on all the 8 still showing up. They seem to be from the 3 of you, plus one other person.
I, too, have noticed an increase in the number of followers. I have been wondering whether it’s worth the time to scan for the would-be porn stars, who seem to show especially for our Tweet jams. I had another odd one, not Vampire, more Darth Vader from the looks of his icon (I assume it was a “he” anyway). I didn’t like the vibes and blocked him.
I know what they are, but don’t use them yet. Just trying to figure out how they would be useful, and I would need to be able to use it in my tweetdeck. But I do some similar things to get types of posts in tweetdeck, so I guess it is really more of an issue of where I go to do certain things. I’ll have to see the added value to switch from my current habits.
But it is kinda cool for my ego to see people adding me to lists (by the way, thanks for putting me on TWO lists LL!)… but that only tells me that I need to work on my humility…
I think the lists I have came from you all too…I’m so newbie to the tweeting, I still am not sure how to retweet! Can I just copy the tweet to retweet? I read one article that said I had to have a retweet application.
I feel like my grandma.
Using the web you’d just copy the tweet and the person’s username and paste it into a tweet of your own that you start with “RT @”. If you don’t add the @ sign their name won’t link to their account.
Most desktop Twitter applications such as TweetDeck have that function built in so all you have to do is click a little button to retweet.
I am a Grandma – and i just have such a hard time with all these techy things. I finally figured out how to set up a Twitter account (after much wailing and gnashing of teeth)and then deleted it because I felt guilty for having one more thing to make me spend more time on the computer. I’m trying so hard for balance here. I just don’t know about tweeting….
Linda,
You’re one cool grandma…
Still watching and waiting to see if the lists will be a good fit (for me). I often jump in and figure stuff out to see if it is worth the effort, but this time I’m holding back. I can’t be on Twitter as often as a lot of people due to lack of gadget-ability (I have no mobile means of uploading and checking Tweets). If I see a great suggestion of how the lists would help me sort out the massive stream of tweets, perhaps I’d consider.
I think ultimately, like most everything else about Twitter, lists will be a personal thing with everyone using them the way that works best for them. In my case I use desktop applications and already have some groups on them to make it easier to connect with folks.
Since Twitter’s lists aren’t integrated into any third party apps yet I’m just using them for a couple of types of people that I’d like to be able to reference but not necessarily follow as an exclusive group.
I do a lot of work with WordPress so I’ve got a list for other WordPress developers and designers in my network as a handy reference.
And because making connections is important to me I also created a list for all the people I’ve met in person. Just a curiosity for me. But I was amazed when that list grew to over 100 names. And I’m sure there are some that I’ve missed too.
Dan, I am here to make you unhumble.
Chris, someday I hope to make your face-to-face list.
There’s plenty of room. That list just keeps getting bigger.
I like the Twitter list feature; I find it useful for taking a glance at like-minded twitterers in a single page. I find that there are a few very wordy twitterers that tend to garble up the feed. They are definitely valuable, and I follow them for a reason. But, then I miss other tweets in the noise. It’s nice to keep those separate
L.L.,
I think I like the idea of the Twitter list, but it seems to be an idea third party apps have had for a while. It will be interesting to see how these lists play into SEO once Bing starts indexing Twitter.
I’ve started a few lists just to test out the functionality, but I don’t think I am going to transfer my lists from TweetDeck. Well, not while it is a manual process at least.
It’s interesting to look at other people’s lists to see who they have included and under what label, but there’s something about it that makes me feel a bit like a peeping Tom.
For the time being, I think I will just use lists as a way to recommend other tweeters to my followers.
Brad