BrandSavant

Gaining Insight From Social Media Data

A Brief, Lightly-Held But Contrarian View Of Twitter Lists

by Tom Webster on November 4, 2009

There are 99 reasons to love Twitter lists, but here is one reason to at least think twice about them. People are making lists to try to make sense out of Twitter. Once you start following a thousand or more people, Twitter becomes a vast, undifferentiated soup. Somedays, the soup is good. Somedays, the soup is bad.

So we make lists. Lists are an attempt to curate Twitter experiences by categorizing people according to whatever topic you choose, so that viewing tweets from that list will give you a more focused view of the tweetstream. I have noticed that I am popping up on lists about media. Sometimes I tweet about media, so that makes sense, and I am grateful to be included on those lists.

But people are messy, and don’t go back into boxes very well. For every tweet about media I might have three about market research, six funny videos, 25 out-of-context replies to others and 50 pictures of my son’s upcoming 5th birthday party (Happy Birthday, S!) This is likely to be true of nearly everyone else on these lists, unless you just use Twitter as a blast mechanism for your business (and Twitter won’t grow that way!)

So I might find myself on lists for market research, branding, radio, social media, etc. At any given time, chances are whatever list you see me on has little to do with my last tweet, and maybe my last 20 tweets. Still, let’s assume that Twitter lists will impose a little order. Lists are a new toy, and people are starting to follow them en masse. When you follow a few lists, you are potentially following a lot more people than you used to. Given my thesis that most humans will not fit neatly into those lists, it may be that adding 4 or 5 “focused” lists (especially ones that you didn’t make yourself) to your follower counts will make Twitter more chaotic, not less.

I prefer saved searches to lists any day. What do you think?

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  • http://www.adamsherk.com Adam Sherk

    I tend to agree, Twitter Lists can quickly get overwhelming, and creating tightly focused Lists is a challenge because users don’t neatly fit into specific categories. I think there are some good opportunities for media sites though – for instance Lists of all the writers who cover a particular beat. Although to your point those writers won’t always be tweeting about their beat. (As a side note “Tweet about your beat” sounds like a cheesy line from an news room social media policy) :)

    It’s still early days, but so far major media is moving slowly with Twitter Lists. I took at look at 30+ news sites and to-date there hasn’t been a lot of List creation or a build up of followers on the Lists. An Early Look at News Media Twitter Lists: Not Much Traction

  • http://hooversbiz.com Tim Walker

    Good post, sir. *If* we want less chaos & better focus around topics, then, yes, saved searches are the thing. But lists could also provide some beneficial chaos, in the sense that they can foster discovery of interesting new people based not on an algorithm, but on some tweeter’s sense of commonality.

    Maybe?

  • Tom Webster

    Maybe! Thanks, Tim–you’re on my list no matter what :)

  • http://curiouslypersistent.wordpress.com Simon

    Searches also have the advantage of being hidden (at least for the time being). List “insiders” creates outsiders – people who didn’t make the list. Twitter may be proud of its asymmetry, but humans are ultimately needy and selfish people and so it can cause potential issues :)

  • http://www.jessicaswanson.com Jessica Swanson

    Tom,

    You raise some very good points about Twitter lists. I have found that the Twitter lists that I appear on are often completely unrelated to my field of expertise as well. Of course, the list function is so new that it may take some time for people to truly figure out how and why to use them.

    However, I do find that compiling my own lists has helped me leverage my time on Twitter in a more orderly fashion. So, although I do feel that it will take some time for lists to make much sense, I do like the function for my own business.

    Thanks for bringing this to our attention. Great post.

  • http://insightsandingenuity.com Heather Rast

    Hi, I stumbled across your blog from a Technorati listing. It’s interesting you write about Twitter Lists (and not from the functional POV), as I did so recently myself after having read a number of write-ups from others.

    I think your writing framed up a few points of my own much more nicely – how lists allows us to curate experiences by categorizing people. Lists simply allow our brains opportunities to organize and associate personalities in a more digestible way, I guess.

    My concern is close to your point about how it’s not easy to pigeon hole or color-code individuals. Part of our interest lies in the very diversity that makes list labels tough to determine. I’m not exclusively ‘social media,’ nor am I exclusively ‘Iowan,’ or ‘branding,’ etc. Furthermore, I believe that emotions run very close to the computer screen and Lists can have a polarizing effect, too – more than one person has placed someone on List X out of a feeling of obligation, etc. which only dilutes the value of the list in the first place.

    If you get a chance, check out my post. Let me know what you disagree, or agree with. Glad I found yours. Thanks, @heatherrast

    http://insightsandingenuity.com/2009/11/07/the-ugly-side-of-twitter-lists/

  • http://hooversbiz.com Tim Walker

    One of the neat things about social media: when someone as nifty as Heather shows up serendipitously on the blog of someone as nifty as Tom. There is hope for the world! :)

  • Tom Webster

    Heather–you said that sooo much better than I did. I haven’t liked cliques since grade school, and I think imposing order on Twitter through lists of people (and not searches for topics or tags) is folly at best; delusional at worst.

    BIG ups for dropping the Trapper Keeper reference!

  • Tom Webster

    Right you are, Tim–another word for serendipity is “undirected knowledge discovery,” which you are no doubt familiar with. And exactly the sort of thing that fights against lists.

    Greetings from Munich! As nifty as serendipity is, it is almost equally nifty that I can approve and respond to these comments on a mobile phone, while drinking a beer at the Hofbrau. Truly, this internet thing might catch on.

  • http://hooversbiz.com Tim Walker

    Prost!

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