Twitter lists are going to be interesting

So I popped myself on to twitter today and to my surprise I see quite a heavily promoted new feature “Twitter lists” I am obviously a little behind as this feature has been available to me for nearly fifteen days now.

At first glance the lists feature seems like a useful tool to organise your twitter feeds into meaningful categories, this seems like a good idea in itself. Sometimes I am just looking for tech tweets, sometimes I like to follow celebrities, authors and just the people I actually know. Sometimes really interesting things get completely lost in the noise.

Adding someone to a list seems pretty straightforward, go to their page and select “lists” from the menu above their posts and add them to a list. You can also add them directly from your following page.

So after you have made your lists what can you do with them? Well this is where it gets interesting. You can of course view your owns lists but assuming you have made any of your lists public then you can share lists with other twitter users. Be prepared to see some popular lists floating around with some really interesting people on them . This seems like a really useful way to get pre-packed lists of fascinating twitterati to follow without hunting around, searching and adding, although seem might argue that is the fun of twitter. If you think so then make your own list. Perhaps it will get a bit of a following. Of course with a single click someone can follow or unfollow your entire list.

I am guessing that the number of lists you appear on is going to be directly relevant to the amount of new followers you get so also expect some attempted gaming of this system. I am not to interested in what these techniques might be but I am never surprised at the resourcefulness of people after a little bit of traffic, notoriety or fun.

Yours and other users lists can be found at yourtwitterurl/lists here is mine with a few celebrities I follow both small and large http://twitter.com/FeersumEndjinn/famous-people

“Twitter lists” is currently trending pretty strongly with varied views on this new feature. Some people are moaning that it is going to cause segregation, some people “Just Wanted. More. God. Damn. Character.” Others just seem confused.

It does seem like facebook has had this feature for a long time, but the thing I particular like about twitter is the emergent behaviour of such a restricted system. It makes for some really interesting phenomena. I can't wait to see what people do with this. If you've got any suggestions or thoughts on  the new feature, please stick them in a comment.