Soci@lByte

I finally got the Twitter list function. Oh, you didn’t? See Melissa Hourigan’s post, Invite-Marketing + ego + envy = success. What Twitter’s clearly saying by giving me an invite over my-less-esteemed colleague, Ef, is that they like me more. Or I was somehow a match in a random algorithm. I’m going with the former theory.

Twitter lists allow people to create lists of people they follow, which is supposed to help us find new people to follow. If you enjoy following Jeremy Story, surely you would be interested in seeing who he is following. This alternative (still in Beta) helps replace the now spammy Follow Fridays and the suggested list from Twitter to follow.

My first impression is that people are being way too vague with their lists. Bloggers? Ok, what kind? Coloradoans? I can find those on my own. My suggestion is to make the lists as specific as possible, include geography, profession, topics, demographics, etc. So far, my lists are former-Schenkein-ites (my first PR agency), PR Pros in Colorado, Colorado Women in Technology and Chicks Who Click Crew (a niche conference for women in social media). I’d much rather know “Freelance Designers in Colorado” than just “Designers” or “Denver Restaurants” than the label “Food.” Although I do love Scobleizer’s list of Venture Capitalists.

So now you have potential lists of people to follow and pitch your product, right? Not so fast. That’s a horrible approach there. Same rules of Twitter apply. Find new people to follow and interact with and save the sales pitch for a brochure. The best opportunity for a corporate Twitter account is to contribute to their own helpful lists to the community. If you’re Whole Foods, make lists of gluten-free food companies, vegan food companies, organic food bloggers, all the Whole Foods Twitter accounts, etc.

Unfortunately, I think a lot of people will glom onto the number of lists as another indicator of influence along with number of followers. I hope rather than a popularity metric, users will find it as a way to meet more interesting people online.