This announcement is a blow to many websites that have implemented listing and grouping for Twitter, but the reality is that most of them will adapt and thrive (and a few will vanish). Twitter has cordially invited us to the sneak peek of this feature and I’ve been using it since yesterday. My first reaction was: it’s about time. My second reaction: It’s about “me”, not about “us”.
Keep this in mind: Twitter list is a way for you to partition a subset of your own friends. Period. They also added a neat way for you to follow someone else’s list. You will be able to follow http://twitter.com/calbucci/entrepreneurs if I create a list called “entrepreneur”. It’s not clear how the syntax for lists will work, but I’m suggesting right now we use the “+” sign, either in “calbucci+entrepreneurs”, or “@calbucci+entrepreneurs” or “+calbucci/entrepreneurs”.
Some users have used TweepML to partition their own follow list. A few users have created their own “Follow Friday” list, or people they admire, or people they recommend you to follow. That’s the minority of the users of TweepML. We expect that with the launch of Twitter lists this category of lists will become less popular on TweepML (or not!)
We will integrate TweepML with Twitter Lists to make a seamless experience for users and we’ll have a set of features that will augment Twitter lists (maybe that’s why Twitter has invited us to try to the feature ahead of time).
However, there are at least 10 issues we found with Twitter lists that won’t be solved with this launch. Some of those problems are going to be addressed by Twitter soon, some they might never do it. But all of them are non-issues if you use TweepML:
#1 You can’t create a list with yourself: A Twitter list is a subset of your followers. You cannot follow yourself, and you cannot add yourself to a list you create. If I create “Entrepreneurs in Seattle” list, I cannot be on it.
#2 You can only add people you follow: That’s the same issue as above, but what if I want to create a list that doesn’t have everyone that I follow. For example, I might not want to follow all the 300+ Entrepreneurs in Seattle.
#3 It’s hard to add people to your list: To add someone to your Twitter list you go to your Friends page and select one-by-one who you want on your list.
#4 No way to go from list subscriber to tweep subscriber: Imagine you are following a list of 25 photographers. You get upset because the list owner keeps adding irrelevant people, or removing cool people. You decide you just want to follow them directly. There is no UI to do that now.
#5 No way for people to know you are following them: If you follow a list, the people on that list won’t be notified you are following them. You lose the opportunity of them following you back.
#6 No way to “follow-the-list-except-that-guy-who-tweets-too-much”: If you follow a list is all or nothing. You can’t exclude that guy that can’t stop tweeting.
#7 You can’t import/export lists: They don’t support the TweepML format, but they’ve promised a server-to-server API, which doesn’t matter for end users. If you have a list with 25 accounts, there is no way to easily import a list. There is no way to export that list either, like into a spreadsheet or a text document.
#8 What if you block someone: Blocking on Twitter is somewhat weak already, because the person can continue to follow your tweets by just going to your page (if your account is public like most people). Now, if someone creates a list that you are part of it, anyone that you blocked can follow your tweets again by following the list.
#9 No stats or analytics: Right now Twitter does not tell you anything about your list. I believe in the future they will tell you how many people are following that list, but that’s it. No way to know how people found the list, how many people came and went, etc. This is probably not important to your average user, but for power users and business, this is critical.
#10 No dynamic lists: Finally, Twitter doesn’t allow you to have dynamic lists. For example, if you go to TweepSearch and you want to follow everyone who’s a Security Consultant in Seattle you have to be manually updating that list.
And TweepML…
As I said before, Twitter will address some of those issues over time, particularly around UI and making things easier to use and enjoyable. TweepML.org (the service) and the TweepML format already addresses all of the issues above and once we integrate it with Twitter list you’ll have the best solution possible.
2 comments:
Hi Marcelo - is there a limit on the number of lists per user account? Can the @twibes user account have 20K Twitter lists?
A few things I have found, maybe Twitter is addressing things as we speak, afterall it is Beta:
#1 You can add yourself to your own lists, I have done this on my account.
#2 You can add who you like to a list, unless that person is blocking you. You do not have to follow them.
#3 There were a few glitches and I would click to check a box and it wouldn't respond. Seems to work better now though.
#4 Twitter lists changes the way Twitter operates. In my view you can now have lists that will produce a newstream from a number of sources. You may not be able to communicate other than through @messages though. Then the rest of the stream can be a list of friends that you follow and who follow you back. These you will be able to DM. Then your private lists can update you on any Tweeple you want to keep right up to date with.
I agree wholeheartedly with the other 6 points. A feature I would like to see is keyword filters like that in Twibes, but I guess Twibes will give me that feature.
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