A word about Twitter Lists

I know that some people are well on top of the whole list concept, but equally there's a few people who are not. So I thought it might be an idea to briefly go through it for those people who are curious about such things.

Lists are simply groups of people that you think go together in some way. I have created lists of the people that I follow and split them into groups such as UK librarians, US librarians, School Librarians, Libraries and EvertonNews - the last being the really most important one of course! The value of a list is that you can just click on it and see all of the tweets from just that group. It's a great way to follow lots of people reasonably easily and to keep on top of what they're all saying. It makes the whole process that much more managable. You can also add people to a list and not actually follow them directly on Twitter either. This would be useful if you want to keep an eye on competitors without them knowing that you're watching them, and without you having to keep manually checking their account. (Of course, they have to have an open, rather than closed account for that to work.) You'll probably find that you're on a number of lists yourself - it never fails to boggle me just how many lists there are, both of a serious and a trivial nature.

So, how do you set up a list? In your Twitter account you'll see your normal stream, and look at the menu at the top of it; there'll be a lists option. Click on that, and if you've not done a list before you'll just have the 'create list' option. Mine create option is down at the bottom, as I already have a bunch of them:

Click on the 'Create a list' option:

Fill it in as appropriate. The last option is the only one worth mentioning - when they say 'Private' that's exactly what they mean. If you're on someone else's private list even *you* don't know it! Public lists are shared with the world, including the people who are on them, so be careful if setting up a public list called 'idiots who make me laugh' or some such! I'd suggest thinking about the lists that you want and create them all in one go if you can do. You're allowed a total of 20 lists with a maximum of 500 people on each list.

Once you've got your list(s) you can then go through and add people to them. Just click on the people that you're following menu option and click on the Lists icon. Then simply tick the lists that you want that person to be on:

That's all there is to it. If you want to take someone off, just tick to toggle them off the list. You can also add people to lists who you don't follow. Again, just find their tweets, click on the list option and add them. They won't be informed either way. So, if you want to see the lists that you're on, you need to find out yourself. In the 'New Twitter' client, your profile details are in the top right hand corner, and you'll see options such as Following, Followers, Favorites and Listed. The number next to that will tell you how many public lists you're on, and you can click to view them. It can be quite illuminating to see how other people see and classify you.

The secondary value of lists should now be becoming apparent. Not only can you assign people to lists to group appropriate tweets, you can share this with other people. So, if you wanted to see all the UK librarians that I follow you can just find my profile, click on my lists and decide if you want to start following any of them yourself. On the other hand, and this is the fun thing, you can decide to follow that list *without having to follow those people individually*. So, if you're desperate to keep up with news about Everton, but don't want to have Everton twitter accounts as people you're following, just subscribe to the list and when you want to view that information, just click on the list itself.

This can be tremendously valuable. A company or university can assign someone to create Twitter lists of all their colleagues and this can then be publicised, making it really easy for other Twitter users to subscribe to everyones tweets in one go. The only real disadvantage is that if the list owner decides to add/delete someone, or the list itself, you have no control over that, but if it's that important to you, you'll probably want to create your own list anyway.

So, that's Twitter lists. If you want to explore, you can take a look at some of mine.The following are some lists that you might be interested in. I should point out that they're MY lists, and I put people into the categories that I do because it's useful for me - but not necessarily for you. Having said that, I do try to be sensible about it. If I've put you in a UK Librarians list and you're actually in the US, then clearly I've just made a mistake, and if it's a big deal to you, DM me and tell me. If you don't think you're a librarian, clearly I do. (So sorry to all the Shambrarians out there, but you're in the UK Librarians list!) I would advise against DMing someone and saying 'please put me on your list of 'x'' since it's an entirely personal choice and they might not take kindly to it.

UK Librarians1 (List 1 - I hit the 500 limit)

UK Librarians2 (I was working back, so the longer I've been following someone, the more likely they are to be on this list. I should also point out the librarians from Ireland are in these lists as well.)

Overseas Librarians (That is to say, librarians based in countries that are not the US or UK)

US Librarians

School Librarians (From anywhere in the world. This list also includes any Twitter accounts for schools that I follow)

Library Accounts (From around the world)

Library Associations (From around the world)

I'll be adding to these lists as I go along, but I should stress it's as I choose, since they're my lists, and they're primarily for my use, though you are MOST welcome to use them yourself. But have a go at creating your own - it's quite a fun thing to do. However, if you have lots of people that you follow, it's a real pain to do it, which is why I suggest that you want to create your lists and then just go through the people you follow once.

If you want to find lists, check first of all to see the lists that you're on, then check to see if the people you follow have created some lists. Next, check to see the lists that they're on. After that, you're a bit limited. The best/only resource worth exploring is Listorious which keeps lists and can help you create your own. What's that you say? 'Wouldn't it be a good idea if Twitter had some nice way of making it easy to search through lists?' Yes, good question. If you find a good answer, let me know! Finally, while I'm on the whole 'lists' thing, Tweepml which I used a lot and thought was wonderful really does seem to have died a total death. I have seen reference to something called http://twitlist.us/ but know nothing more about it than that.

 

Comments

[David]

Good advice. One other thing about lists that's quite important is that you only see replies between people in the list.

So if @daveyp (Dave Pattern - UK) replies to @librarythingtim (Tim Spalding - US), or vice versa, you won't see it without going in to your main stream.

I do find it good to split my feeds in to lists - that's the only way I can (almost) manageably follow everything, but it is annoying to miss some of these interesting cross-continental conversations.