Today Twitter rolled out the new "lists" feature to the remaining tweeters who were not already part of the beta and at first glance it's clear that Twitter lists will drastically change the way we view our social network.

Lists as tags

Lists are categories you create in which you place other tweeters. For instance, I placed @TheOnion in one of my lists called "humor" as well as a list called "news". You might be thinking, "big deal, many Twitter clients have grouping" but that's where the similarities end. Each list "following" @TheOnion is listed on @TheOnion's twitter page. If @TheOnion were added to 3908 lists, this number will appear on @TheOnion's Twitter page along with the tweeter's name and list name.

You can see that this essentially tags @TheOnion with valuable meta data about how others see them. Even from this short list it's evident that @TheOnion is a funny news source that covers politics. Sometimes the lists are unexpected in which case you'll learn something new about the tweeter or something new about how others see you. Other times the list names may be humorous. For instance, I'm in someone's list called "possible-robot-spies". This is probably less valuable as meta data but funny nonetheless. I just hope people don't start adding me to lists like "lazy_bum" or "bad_kisser"

List count is the new follower count

The tag meta is great but the list count is the real kicker. Until now, most tweeters have been using follower count as a quick metric to determine a tweeter's popularity and sphere of influence but that measurement is very inaccurate because it can be easily gamed and many followers are spammers, bots and lurkers who don't even read your tweets. Lists, on the other hand, take time and effort to maintain so being added to a list means that you have a valuable friend/fan/follower who is actively engaging with the network and reading your tweets. These are the people you want to have in your network. They are the ones who will read, respond and retweet your tweets.

Determining authority

What's missing is a summary of similar lists following a tweeter. For instance, if you could see that a tweeter has 200 lists with the word "tech" following him/her you'd know they were a tech authority.