Twitter lists have been introduced just a couple of weeks ago and it is still not really clear to many people how the lists can be used. Let’s take a look at just three examples of how the lists can turn useful:
1. Create a Group Tweet Widget
Say you are part of some team or a community and you want to create a collaborative widget of what you all Tweet about. Twitter lists can be a perfect way to do that:
- Go to Twitter List Widget generator;
- Provide your user name, list name and title (Setting tab);
- Customize the look and feel (Preferences, Appearance and Dimensions tabs);
- Grab the code and let your team members add it to their personal pages and blogs:
Here’s what we have for our Search and Social team:
2. Subscribe to Lists by RSS
What can be a better use of a Twitter list than the ability to stalk the group of people more effectively. While Twitter (surprisingly) doesn’t allow to subscribe to a list by RSS, there are already external tools for that!
TwiterList2RSS is a good example:
- Just create the list of people you really want to subscribe to (be very selective);
- Grab the list link;
- Go to the tool and provide the list link:
Here’s an example of our collective S&S Twitter list:
3. Monitor Popular Lists, Promote Lists
There will be plenty of Twitter lists directories and trackers, right now we already have one good example – Listorious. The site tracks popular and new lists as well as allows to share your own lists:
- Find popular media lists;
- Find popular news lists;
- Find popular marketing lists;
- Search Twitter lists;
- See most popular tags;
- Submit your own list!
Nice and informative post.
List Widget generator has answered my prayers.
Great info.
Have RT’d your Tweet
But what’s the point of making all these lists? I’ve yet to see anyone explain that.
List are useful for sorting your favorite tweets at one place, if you like to read some one’s tweets but you dont have time to read it by visiting their profile. but using twitter list you can add your favorite twitter profiles at one place and when ever you’ll get then you can read it, in this way make your life easier.
@Michael, I have not seen much use for them either; however, I will make this guess. 1) Lists would be another way to promote yourself and your colleagues who discuss a specific topic. 2)There is a patent out discussed by Bill Sawski that author ranking will be a factor in evaluating UGC, so I could see the quality and quantity of lists you are own playing a role in author ranking. 3) It would be a better way to search a topic on Twitter by gathering information together. Moreover, 4) it would be a way for you to make Twitter less noisy (a common complaint) by partitioning your followers into groups that make sense to you.
I’m still waiting to see what 3rd party apps like tweetdeck will do with these lists.
I’m in agreement with Michael, people are going list mad. Wait for the Ultimate list of top SEO lists to appear…might do that one myself ;