March 5, 2010
Twitter Lists Mean Less Clutter, Less Noise
Twitter Lists have been available since late last year, but I've only recently begun using them in the past 2-3 weeks. When I started using them, I noticed a few fundamental changes to how I began using Twitter to stay connected with close friends, stay available to acquaintances, find good stuff from my favorite "human content aggregators", and keep up with the topics I care about.
(BTW, I view the usefulness of Twitter in the context of those four purposes and nothing more. It's not a tool for personal branding for me, although that tends to be a natural side-effect of anything one might do online.)
Staying Connected With Close Friends
Before: My friends were mixed in with everyone else I followed, making it difficult to actually stay connected with them because the noise of the feed drowned out those I truly care about.
After: Now I only "follow" the people I know personally and interact with on a *daily* basis. This is mostly just my colleagues in the Digerati, but there are also a few family members on that list.
Staying Available to Acquaintances
Before: These folks were also included among the people I followed, which meant I was fed activity that was less relevant to my daily life.
After: The people I know personally, but don't interact with daily, are grouped in a list called "acquaintances". This gives me the opportunity to quickly check-in on their lives without their activity being fed proactively into my main feed.
Finding Good Stuff From My Favorite "Human Content Aggregators"
Before: The link sharers, bloggers, news feeds, and influencers of the Twitter-verse were lumped in with everyone else. This made it difficult to know, at a glance, who typically shares good content and who is just casually linking to something they've read.
After: The people and organizations that I find most valuable for sharing good content are grouped in a list called "influencers". Now I can skim this list quickly for keywords that I'm interested in and know that almost any link I click will be worth my time.
Keeping Up With Topics I Care About
Before: If someone represented an organization, cause, or movement that I cared about, I would follow them, adding them to the ever-growing fire-hose of my main Twitter feed. It's tough listening for important news or updates with 300 people screaming in the same room.
After: For any organization, cause, or movement that I care about, I can quickly spin-up a new list for the people that represent that topic. Then I know that I'll only be seeing updates regarding the thing I care about when I view that list.
Bottom Line
Twitter Lists were underwhelming at first, but when I started playing with them a little I realized that my world became less cluttered and less noisy.
