Yesterday my twitter account changed surprisingly. A big fat message welcomed me, telling me that i am one of a few selected beta-testers of a new feature: Lists.

The message also says i should not tweet about it yet, and so i kept the secret. But when i hit “twitter lists” into the twitter search today i realized that the top-secret beta-feature isn’t top-secret anymore.

Everybody seems to talk about twitter lists already! Even some big tech bloggers turned out to be hysteric and just started to tweet and post without thinking. Hey, thanks for posting wrong things and just “forgetting” about the Beta-Status. And congratulations for the traffic…

In fact, twitter has no reason to keep “lists” undercover. It’s a cool feature and i can understand people’s hysteria.

So why not writing a blog post – not a tweet – about it? My conscience is clear…

Thank you Twitter!

At first i want to thank the twitter team for allowing me to be one of the beta testers. It’s truly a honor and shows me that the way i’m using twitter is a “good” way. It was about time that someone noticed :-)

Another thanks goes to twitter because they finally built something really innovative and useful…

With lists you can categorize the people you follow. For example, you can fill a list with your worst friends, virtual sex partners, coolest spammers or other groups of lovely people.

The way you create and edit lists, and the way how you put “followings” into a list, is pretty simple and self-explaining. The twitter experience will not become more complicated, it will become easier.

Some facts about twitter’s list feature!

Attention here, the facts i’m telling you are not officially confirmed yet. It’s only a first overview, a small – and probably – incomplete collection of features. Everything’s Beta.

• Lists can be private or public. You can change this anytime.
• You can follow whole lists of other tweeps.
• The url for lists is: twitter.com/username/listname
• You can also take @username/listname for the usual tweeting.
• You can see in how many list you appear yourself.
• You can put tweeps into a list without following them.
• … … …

I’ve also read somewhere that you can create up to 20 lists with up to 500 tweeps inside each. Other people say there is no limit. Don’t ask me, i don’t care.

This is how twitter lists look like (beta):

1. I just wonder… When you read this fat message, what do you think: Is the list feature LIVE or BETA? Is twitter rolling it out or only testing? Hard question, isn’t it?
2. Here you can see in how many lists your own timeline appears.
3. Your lists are shown up in the sidebar. When you hover over the links, an arrow (5) appears that opens the list page.
4. Still an ugly broken “View all” link. I already sent feedback to twitter and wonder how long it will take to remove the wasted |

The list page:

When you click on the arrow link in the sidebar you open this clean and perfect list page…

Confusing parts:

But when you directly click on the list-link the list appears in the usual timeline area. This part is confusing:

While i still added 3 followings to this list, the message at the top tells me that there were no “users” and i should add some by visiting my following page.

Maybe i am too blind to see the deeper sense here. Anyway, this page needs improvement and explanation, i even don’t know if this timeline is required at all – since there is a fine list page.

Another problem is that i can’t remove tweeps from a list. The procedure is clear but doesn’t work. The related checkbox is already unchecked when i open it but the tweep is still in the list. Will put this into my next feedback mail…

Why using lists on twitter?

I think lists will make it much easier to stay closer to old fellows and super interesting gurus. Especially when you are following masses of people and some cool tweeps that don’t post too much.

I often think “Hey, what’s up with @****, long time no see” and then can’t find his/hers last tweep in the timeline. Or i just forgot how to write the name correctly.

Currently i’m testing the concept of putting new followings into a private list and see if they follow back. This makes it a bit easier to manage new connections…

I also noticed that you can put tweeps into a list without following them. This way it is possible to “spy” tweeps for a while to see if they are worth following. Or create a list with people who blocked you (not sure if that works) to blame them all together :)

But again, i have no clue if all these things were meant to work this way in the end. And apart from that there may be more important things for twitter too improve – @AlexaRPD reminded me. But that’s another story.

I only know that i will like twitter’s new list feature once when it is ready.

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