The folks over at Twitter announced this week the wide spread availability of its long awaited and talked about lists functionality.
I was lucky enough to be part of the 5% or so who got to test the Lists in the early stages of their exposure to the Twitter World and frankly I like what I saw. The challenge on those initial days was that folks you may have added to your lists could not see themselves on there if they did not have access to the feature.
There was a brief period where the Twitter techs increased the amount of users in the beta test but it was really just a drop in the bucket when you think of the sheer number of users on the system.
Luckily that period was very brief and the feature was removed from everyone while the Twitter techs made final tweaks to the code and then started rolling it out to everyone this past week. Since then activity has been steady on the creation and sharing of lists. In case you missed the spot – you can see the number of lists your on next to your Followers and Following counts directly beneath your bio.
I have seen a lot of discussion about lists and there is even a site in beta, Listorious, that will feature lists created by and for users. I am sure there will be others as well as the integration of lists into all of the various Twitter applications out there. Both Tweetdeck and Seesmic have already indicated updates will be out soon for their applications.
Of course – just like being followed by a popular Tweeter – being on one of their lists will be of significance. Just like we put importance and give credibility to those with large followings on this service – if your on a lot of lists then it is going to provide the same type of validity to your info and tweets.
Add to that the fact that each list can be Followed by others and you add another dimension to the popularity and validity of that listing.
Use of these lists are already ranging from communities, companies, services and Best Of Name Your Category lists. There are even some out there soliciting inputs to be on their lists for some of those areas.
Lists sound like the Google Page Rank of Twitter. What do you think?
