Thursday, October 15, 2009

Twitter Lists

Twitter has announced a great new feature being tested in Beta: Twitter Lists!



Twitter announce this feature last month in a blog post by Nick Kallen (@nk). Those using the beta feature get the greeting above, asking that you create a list. A pop-up window then asks that you name your first group and choose whether it is open or private. Lists are public by default, but can be made private. Followers can then subscribe to your lists, allowing them to find many new people to follow with one click. Lists is now still in a limited testing phase, but it will be rolled out to all users (so be patient). This will make every day #FollowFriday.

If you have the feature and want to see who has you on their lists look next to your Follower and Following count for a "Lists" count, where your Tweet count used to be. This is also a great way to find other lists that might be interesting to you. Also you should check out Listorious (but you will need a user name and password from @Gregory during the preview period). This is a service that will allow you to find many useful lists that you can follow or use to help you create your own. You can also submit lists that you think should be listed on the site.

This is going to make healthcare and Gov 2.0 conversations on Twitter so much easier to follow. Unlike what many seem to believe, I do not think this is the beginning of the end for 3rd party apps. This is going to open up a whole new slew of apps as folks find way of using Lists API to create all kinds of useful functions. For those of you who have already been testing the feature I suggest you check out all my lists and then make sure you follow everyone on Tim O'Reilly's great lists.

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