An Unexpected (and Time Saving) Benefit of Twitter Lists

I love twitter lists. When the brilliant folks at twitter unveiled the feature a few months back, so many of us were charmed, relieved, eased (and even more so when they worked out a few kinks). Although other great apps such as tweetdeck have ways to group those that we follow, having a way right within twitter was nifty. Of course those with thousands of followers had to decide whether to go through the voluminous list person by person, all the while getting new followers daily (love those dedicated folks!) or ignore it (which seemed sensible). But it was, for the moderate user like myself, pure magic. Not only could I now group tweeters I followed right on my page, which I loved, but new peeps I followed could also readily be added to a list.
I’d struggled for the year I’ve been on twitter with re-finding almost anyone I follow (Admittedly, I never altogether got the hang of tweetdeck). There is no way to alphabetize anyone on twitter; finding someone from, say the first month that I added people, would be an essentially impossible task at this point.

With the lists, no problem. Easy peasy!

What I didn’t even think of was how incredibly helpful the lists on other users pages would be for me.

No, I don’t go looking through their lists for more people to follow, people with interests like mine, or some of the perhaps more intended uses of the lists. I have never had a need to search more people out on twitter; there are plenty already, thank you very much, and more come my way daily with no extra time spent on my part.

What I love is finding someone new (in the many twitter-ways that it happens), and usually instantly being able to see much about their values, and who values them, by the number and type of lists they are on. Now don’t get me wrong; many of the finest tweeters are on very few lists, so I in no way ignore those individuals. But as a first step, for 80% of the time, it has saved me hours to vet someone this way.

As we all know (or should know, if you’ve been on twitter for any length of time), number of followers can mean very little. Yes, sometimes it means a lot. But some outside applications for twitter are known for giving users the ability to puff up their chests via sites proclaiming, “Add 1000 followers a day for just 3 easy payments!” or “Free tool to add twitter followers like no one’s business!” (No one’s business indeed). So, as with the lists, though I often do notice the number of followers first, (like I suppose many heterosexual men notice the women with big breasts first), I want to know more about that user before I jump into their twitter bed.

Before lists came along, I would, of course, next look at their feed. Sometimes this quickly gave me what I needed to know. But at times their first page might be filled with a current conversation they are in, tweets from a conference they are at, or other tweets that don’t get to the heart of who they really are. Continuing on to look at their prior pages is time consuming, as we all know, and (perhaps too often), I would give it up there and decide I couldn’t get enough of a feel to add them to those I follow.

The lists users are on, however, have given me the ability to know more about them far more quickly than combing through their feed. Again, 80% of the time, I instantly know from looking at these if I want to follow this person. I don’t consider myself a twitter snob; I have the usual amount of twitter goodwill to follow a large percentage of those who have the desire to follow me. But as we know, twitter’s Wild West is full of marketers, spammers, and those whose tweets just add little to my day. By looking at the lists they are on, voilà, I’m in the know instantly about who this person is, to some degree.

All of this being said, I never ignore the 2nd step for those on few or no lists at all. As with many users having few followers, some of the best of twitter is hidden in these less discovered gems (@professormeier, @913kellbell, @tamaraduker come to mind). And what of the newbies? What if no one had followed me when I only had my first dozen followers, and was on no one's lists? So I don’t use the number of lists someone is on to eliminate anyone, ever. If there isn’t enough information in the listings, I always look beyond that to the person’s feed. That, after all, is the heart of twitter.