Twitter lists: A gentler introduction to Twitter

One of the bad things about Twitter is that it’s full of static. All those mundane posts about cats and breakfast and Kanye West can turn away people before they find people on Twitter worth following. (@amandaricker, I’m talking about you.)

Thankfully, Twitter has provided a new tool that should help the microblogging service become more useful right off the bat: Twitter Lists.

Lists allow you and everybody else to create lists of Twitter users — area-specific, subject-specific, conference-specific, industry-specific, beat-specific, etc.-specific people.

Finding the right list can be tricky. There may be a way to search public lists, but I haven’t found it yet. (You can make private lists, by the way, that are only visible to you.)

The best way I’ve found so far to find useful lists is to find a Twitter user you trust who has created some. You can also find someone you trust or respect on Twitter, visit his profile and see who has listed that person on which lists. You can then choose to subscribe to those lists, if you like.

Twitter Lists are being rolled out to Twitter users right now. Not everybody has them yet, but everyone soon will. You’ll get a little notification box at the top of your Twitter homepage letting you know when the feature is available for you.

Please take a look at the lists feature. If you’re on the fence about Twitter and having a hard time finding the useful, informative posts on there, this might be a way for you to find a way into Twitter and make it into another tool in your journalism toolbox.

(Oh, and I’m not the only one writing about Twitter lists for use in journalism. If you don’t believe me, believe Poynter.)

Related posts:

1. Building a Twitter strategy
2. Making sense of social media
3. Richard Sambrook: Transparency is the new objectivity, and the Internet is not your enemy
4. Washington Post columnist on why reporters should use Twitter