What Are Twitter Lists & Why I Think They're a Big Deal

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Twitter has begun rolling out Twitter Lists to a limited number of users, starting yesterday (Oct. 16, 2009). When I noticed several of my followers discussing this, I went to check my own twitter profile and was presented with the image above. I did not notice the "don't tweet about it yet" message until after I'd already done so, and a follower pointed this out to me who also had lists enabled. Soon thereafter, tons of Tech blog's were posting about it as well, so I am going to take the liberty to follow suit.

First of all, I am very excited by this feature and look forward to the near future when all users have this enabled. In short, I've wanted a native Twiter feature such as this for a while now, since I feel in love with Tweet Deck & Nambu's "Groups" feature within their Twitter clients. I've sort of limited myself to following around 400 people because I've found that after much more than that, my Twitter stream becomes very hard to keep up with without checking it constantly throughout the day. When I used to use very-unstable-and-crashy Nambu and then very-bloated-and-inelegant-non-mac-like Tweet Deck, I loved the ability to group people I follow for easier filtering of their content. Brizzly, the web-based Twitter client that I recently got an invite to, has a 3rd party feature built into their app which enables similar functionality. After using all three of these clients, I've found myself using Tweetie for Mac once more (and eagerly awaiting Tweetie 2 for Mac). According to Tweetie's developer, Loren Brichter, Tweetie 2 for iPhone and the upcoming Tweetie 2 for Mac will both support the Twitter Lists feature nativley. So what are Twitter lists?

This is an example of a list I made last night. This list simply contains all people that I follow on Twitter whom I know to live in the Washington D.C. area.

As you can see on the right, the amount of people on this list is the amount of people this list is following. The amount of followers this list has, is basically the amount of people who've subscribed to this twitter list.

At first, I was hesitant to press that Follow button as I was not sure what would happen. Would I suddenly start following this lists of 200 tech bloggers that Scoble created? Alas, no. It simply subscribes you to that follower list. Those followers' tweets do not automatically appear in your twitter feed unless you follow the members individually. Subscribing to a list simply saves it in the right-side-column of your twitter profile page. When you click one of these bookmarked lists, you can then see the tweets of the people who are on the list.

Twitter Lists can be public or private. While I keep a private list of 'essential' Twitterers that, when on a busy day, these are the only people I really care about not missing any of their tweets. This list has around 20 people on it. So as to not hurt anyone's feelings, it's a private list. No one can know that they didn't make the cut. Public lists, however, are why I think this will really take off. Follow Friday? Twitter's Suggested Users List? Both concepts are now obsolete. Now anyone can play the role as social curator and group interesting people together in any way want all while sharing these lists with anyone who may want them. This is going to be big, if for no other reason, providing an easy mechanism to share followers.

 

 

Petulance and the Prize

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by Garrison Keillor writing for the New York Times.

Evidently some people were disappointed that Dick Cheney didn't receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and believe me, I sympathize — I thought Philip Roth should’ve gotten the literature prize instead of that grumpy Romanian lady with the severe hair — but it was Mr. Obama whom the Norwegians wanted to come visit Oslo in December and stand on the balcony of the Grand Hotel and wave to the crowd along Karl Johans Gate, and, face it, Mr. Obama is going to draw a bigger crowd than Mr. Cheney would have. When a man has shot somebody in the face with a shotgun, people are going to be reluctant to line up en masse in his presence lest he get excited again.

Going to Oslo in December and sitting through a black-tie banquet with a bunch of wooden-faced Norwegians and eating herring and delivering a speech larded with bromides about international cooperation and no jokes is not what I’d consider a whee of a good time, frankly. Oslo is rather dark and murky in December. The sun rises during the first coffee break and sets right after lunch and this does not make for a festive mood. Bell-bottoms were not invented in Norway, nor was the mambo, or the convertible. This isn’t Carnival in Rio.

Some conservative pundit suggested that the president should’ve declined the prize, but it is not gracious to reject a compliment, one should accept it with becoming modesty, as Mr. Obama did, that’s what your mother brought you up to do. The prize isn’t about you, it’s about Peace, or Literature, or Homecoming, or Champion Hog, or Male Vocalist of the Year, so walk up there and smile for the cameras, say thank you and sit down.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth that you hear among Republicans is 68 percent envy and 32 percent sour grapes. Here is an idealistic, articulate young president who is enormously popular everywhere in the world except in the states of the Confederacy, and here sit the 28 percent of the American people who still thought Mr. Bush was doing a heckuva job at the end, gnashing their teeth, hoping and praying for something horrible to happen such as an infestation of locusts or the disappearance of the sun, something to make the president look bad, which is not a good place for a political party to be, hoping for the country to slide into chaos. When you bet against America, you are choosing long odds.

A person can run down the list of all that’s wrong with this country, including the lobbyists who cross back and forth from public service to influence-peddling like alligators on the golf course, or the bankers who lost their minds in the great mortgage mania, but the country has a history of rising to challenges and turning away from demagogues and doing what needs to be done. Because we are a passionately patriotic people, infused with a love of our history and our land, and so we have limited patience for fools, such as the ones who now dominate the right.

Conservatism is a powerful strain in American life that ordinarily passes as common sense. Save for a rainy day. Don’t foul the nest. Don’t burn your bridges. Don’t sacrifice the future for short-term profit. But when it contradicts itself and becomes weighted down with bigotry and cynicism, then it doesn’t hold water any more.

F. Scott Fitzgerald said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” And conservatives tried to keep functioning through the Bush administration but the contradictions wore them down, and last fall, when the federal government wrote a blank check to stave off collapse of the financial sector, conservative principles came crashing to the ground, and now all they have in common is that they don’t like President Obama.

O.K., but resentment of an American president being honored by the Norwegians is not a good point from which to build a Republican revival. Petulant fury isn’t a winning hand in politics. Get over it.

My fiance, Steffanie, often scoffs when I try to turn on A Prarie Home Companion in when we happen to be in the car on weekends when it's on. She gives me a look of pleading that says, 'Do we really have to listen to this?' Now, I confess I am not a HUGE fan of the show... I mostly like his long running skits (Guy Noir), the news from Lake Wobegon, and his quirky fake commerials. Mostly I like Garrison Keillor whom I think is one of the great living writers of our day.

And I especially like when he writes Op-Ed columns for the New York Times.