Creating the above lists is an example of my initial attempt to harness the usefulness I found in Twitter content delivery. Apt metaphors for Twitter lists include email folders, rss feeds, email rules, Favorites Bar, or any other (technical) method which relies upon separating, segmenting or extracting content in which one can gain efficiency.
The way I labeled my Lists reflects the way I label things are metaphors (and drink coffee). They have particular meanings, but only to me. I would not expect anyone to follow my Lists, but the ability exists. I created my lists for Inbound purposes; others have created lists as content providers --- outbound purposes, in the expectations others will follow their lists.
So, depending upon what "coffee" I want to have, or what "coffee" bar I feeling like hanging out in, will dictate my mood and what list I want to read. If I'm interested in some really good reading I'll goto my Kava list. If I wanted some conversational tone, I'll goto Panera, as the name indicates, reminds me of the conversations that take place there, or the people I used to hang out with.
I get a lot of Autobot followers because I mock a lot of popular/cultural products. I "file" these under "Decaf". Now, I read their profile to make sure its a genuine autobot that followed me before putting it under Decaf. However, once I made the mistake of putting a real person who actually liked what I wrote. He got offended that he was filed under Decaf, told me so on Twitter and unfollowed me. (But he was boring, after all)
The real potential in Lists is capturing the promise of RSS feeds, those blog updates that are delivered in a twitter-like fashion to a central web site area rather than the user having to visit each site to get the updates. If a List has good content, its like a mini RSS feed. If the headline is good, then its more than likely the content will be good. (assuming the same person wrote it). Gawker.com has great headline content as well as abnormalreturns.com. So I would put these is certain lists.
So, for example , my Financial Cup O'Joe Lists follows 58 users. I used to work a mutual fund company which had a Research Library of all the specialized financial publications . I used to browse all the newspapers and magazines in their library after work and was blown away by the brilliance of financial journalism. Now I can do this with a Twitter List at the speed of light compared to those off-line days.
However, due to the volume of and frequency of Tweets, Lists are thin on quality. There is less quality in events that happen in short duration because -- in reality --- there is less momentum that exists in a short duration.
My experience with Twitter Lists is like bringing a surfboard to the beach ready to ride some waves. They're their, but you end up just waiting a long, long, LONG time for the one big wave. The QUANTITY of ripples is so great, it makes waiting for the wave tedious. One has to endure everyone repeating the same headlines over and over again without any imagination or thought of what the headline means.
I made my Lists in hopes of replicating the RSS feed experience, but a List is only as good as the content of the underlying providers to that List (oh, what a surprise, like everything else). Further, although Twitter as the 140-character maximum limit, no limit is imposed on the frequency of Tweets. Lists are vapors of content potential.
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