Twitter Lists, why you should care

Lists on Twitter launched to everyone this week. A lot of people are very excited this, for very good reason. Some are even saying that it might be the biggest thing to hit Twitter in a while. I’m cautiously optimistic. It’s not going to matter to me until the my favorite twitter clients (cotweet, tweetie) adopt the functionality. It is worth watching closely now, though. Hopefully this is the beginning of some great functionality to come out of Twitter, Inc. Maintaining users with new features should be one of their top priorities right now. Numbers have come out lately to show that usage has been flat over the last 3 months. It’s not the easiest service for someone to use, and hopefully this will go a short ways towards making it easier. I know many people who have opened Twitter accounts only to see what the fuss is about, only to not understand it and go somewhere else (see: Facebook). This is a big deal for Twitter. They haven’t fully implemented a ton of new functionality in the last year, as they’ve spent most of the time stabilizing the service. Of course there have been some sublte tweeks here and there.

Like a lot of things in life, it’s turning into another popularity contest. “Ohh, I’m on 3,746 lists! thanks everyone” is a Tweet I’ve been seeing a lot lately. Twitter obviously wants Lists to become a big thing, otherwise they wouldn’t have placed it so prominently within the page. Regardless, this will be another interesting metric to watch on someone’s page next to number of tweets, and the following-follower ratio.

Here are some lists that I’ll probably be making and watching:

• Start unfollowing people that you don’t want to read every day, but are still interested in what they have to say every now and then.
• If you manage a brand account, you probably follow lots of other brands on Twitter to keep an eye on what they’re doing. You can now make a tidy list to watch them on.
• Organize your lists by where you meet someone or what they mostly talk about, if you like, you can keep your list private to be more descriptive. Did you meet them at a conference, local event, introduced by a mutual friend? Are they into music, technology or

Facebook’s had lists for sometime. I haven’t spent the time to organize it in quite some time, so it’s not even worth using right now. I think with the introduction of Twitter Lists, I might revisit it and try it out again, though.

The api is going to be fun. I already have some super secret ideas on how to use it for the @Starbucks Twitter account.

Can we fast forward to the future when the good apps have fully implemented it and the API is available?