The genius of Twitter Lists
I kind of wondered what I was doing for a few minutes.
I’d heard that Twitter was adding a Lists feature, but frankly didn’t care a whole ton. The web’s a constant thrum of world-changing features that change nothing. Today’s revolution, this evening’s ho-hum.
Then I got home from work, and found myself playing with the new Lists. It took my 98-year-old mind 10 or so minutes to grasp the sub-plot, so forgive me. But when the penny finally dropped… you clever bastards.
See, there are two fundamental problems in Twitter for the average human. The first is that we don’t have that many friends, which is somewhat at odds with the social media revolution – the phone keeps on getting bigger, but it’s still the same two school chums who ring. Sad, but admit it’s true.
The second is that the average wall of Twitter posts are indigestible. The sea of hash tags, boil-washed URLs and incomprehensible retweets befuddle the mind. Not the geek mind, sure, but that’s not the point: if Twitter hopes to crack the mainstream consciousness, it must play by the same rules as the rest of us.
So… how to solve (or start to solve) both problems at once?
Lists. Within minutes, I started looking for people with something decent to say to add to my /technology list. Oh sure, I started by adding the people I was already following, but it soon extended beyond that. And within a further 10 minutes, I’d followed five or six new people.
And now, twitter.com/markyp has a tidy panel of easily digestible categories set above the fold – it tells any visitor what I like, without having to skim-read the painful sea of hash tags and bitly urls for clues.
So I doff my cap, Twitter, you made me do two things – find and follow more people, and add site navigability – without even being aware of doing them. Clever, clever bastards.







