How Twitter got lists wrong – issue #1

I should disclaim that we were building this exact tool under the domain Twundles and Twitter came out with this right as coding was going on.

While this new lists feature greatly simplifies sharing groups of people you want others to follow, and cleans up the confusing #followfriday, the public listing side is greatly messed up.

The issue comes around the naming and sharing of public groups. Since the groups are stored under the person that created them, you can have numerous lists that technically have the same name across Twitter. (the site Listorious shows this off accidentally.) The better option would have been unique naming with the ability to allow others to edit your list, if you so desire. You could open the editing to specific named Twitter users, those on the list or everyone.

While this would create a race to get the best list names and control of them, it would also streamline searching, finding and using the very best lists Twitter offers. There are countless lists already for social media, authors and even companies already forming. How the heck do I know which is the best or worst?

Naming and tagging of the lists is incredibly important as everyone scrambles to create their own. Being able to see the lists that just my friends created would have made sense also as those are people I trust already to provide information I want to see. I think Twitter jumped the shark a bit on introducing this and allowing the mass creation without walking through all the scenarios. When you need a site to list the best list of the multiple lists, something went wrong.

(image credit to John Hayden)

Private lists would not be affected by this idea I am suggesting. That topic is actually in the next posting tomorrow.

Christopher Byrne

No, this is not "jumping the shark", this is jumping the gun;-).

I hear what you are saying, but I am already seeing immediate benefits from my use of the lists.

What is not clear is if you can send targeted messages to lists?
IdoNotes

I see your point on the best of type lists, but that is where the public and private lists come into play. If you wish to have your own, you should be able to share it with specific people or everyone (Twundles had this idea built in), but the public lists were singular in name. You could have similar named ones, but not 50 with the exact same name that are public.

Make sense? I am looking to be able to tell which list I am following, make sure I have the best ones and also maintain my own local lists where I can do some of the ideas you presented.

Thanks for commenting!
Chris Prakoso

I don't entirely agree with you on this. Sure, it might not be suitable for 'ranking type of app', but the idea of the List is that, each list is 'your' own list, you create the list and you choose yourself which users are included in that list. The key here is that these choices are very subjective. My list of 'The most funniest people in Twitter land' is probably different to your list with the same kind of topic.
The point is that this list is coming from the freedom of making personal choice.

This opens a big door to possibilities of integration with 3rd party application. For example, we don't need those local groupings anymore like we usually do with Tweetdeck or Seesmic, we just use the List. Imagine if there is only one list for one theme.
Maybe you want to send a Tweet to 'only' people who are in a specific list (ala mailing list type email). This won't work if we only have one list, will it?

No, I think I'm happy with what Twitter decided to do :) For me it's perfect :)
We as programmer (I do Twitter API development too) will just need to get around this 'limitation' to achieve what we want, as we usually do.
Liz Pullen

I think you're absolutely right if you see Lists as a ranking system. But if you see Lists as a way for an individual to organize the people they follow into logical groupings, then this collaborative, competitive strategy doesn't work. My Lists are not the "Best" (which is purely subjective anyway), they reflect my circles of relationship and knowledge of other fields. It's cool that other people might like to follow them but--like Favorites or Saved Searches--they exist as a tool for my convenience not as a way to stroke someone's ego or boost their self-esteem.