So many people are searching high and low for reasons to use Twitter lists and my initial thoughts are that they’re rather pointless in terms of gaining value which is visible to other people.
Anyway, I gave it some thought and I guess these 2 points start the conversation for a discussion:
- Twitter RSS List – A number of websites are creating twitter accounts for their blogs or for their RSS feeds, allowing them to syndicate their information via Twitter rather than just RSS. A great use would be to create an RSS list, which steams RSS feeds only, that way you get the news right at your finger tips in a more real-time way than RSS feeds offer. Naturally, this is a going to distract you constantly, unless you’re used to it.
- Personal Twitter List – So many people are worried about number, you’re cooler if you have more followers nonsense. This is rubbish, you know that Jack Dorsey and Biz Stone said that the greatest way of getting real value out of Twitter was to only follow a small number of people, they never had the thought that people would want to follow more than about 200 people! That said, using lists for personal join by creating a list of users you like to follow for a specific topic would be very useful – this list can remain private and doesn’t need to be shared with the public. I can give you an example – Sometimes when I’m doing SEO for a client, I load up Twitter search and search for the hashtag #SEO and whilst I do my work, I read the tweets:
- It keeps me in the zone
- I find amazing SEOers worth following
- I learn a trick or two
That being said, I could now create a list specific to this and add users who offer great value and then I could follow a refined list – how’s that for thinking outside the box? ;)
These are just two little things that I thought and hope that more valuable uses will be shared or come to mind. Right now it’s not about creating lists, it’s about finding the right vehicle to utilize the lists – Until I find that, lists won’t play much of a roll for me. I must admit though, I do watch which lists I’ve been added to – Currently I’m on 13 lists, who’d have thought!
Have you found a great use for lists?
