Twitter list are dangerous

Filed under Proactive Writer.

Twitter recently added the ability for users to group their followers into lists.

A similar feature has long been part of twitter clients such as Hootsuite and Tweetdeck, but has now been formulised.

Lists are a very useful tool when it comes to managing high numbers of followers, but I would like to suggest that they are also very dangerous.

The reality of using lists is that they filter your view of twitter allowing you to see only tweets from a selected number of followers. Chances are these followers are a bit like you. They probably think like you and have pretty much the same view of the world as yourself. Add to this the fact that you probably also read the same blogs as these twitter lists and you can see just how quickly your view of the world can become stale. This is dangerous for a Proactive Writer.

Twitter lists limit your view of the world and skew your thinking.

My advice is to break out…

Make an effort to read your open stream.

Try following new people.

Seek out new blogs.

Try to find and listen to the people who go against what you think, you never know they might just be right.

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  • http://www.kevinmachin.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk Captain Black

    What would be more useful is to have lists that included everyone expect explicit exclusions, i.e. people you know for a fact that you’re not interested in. That way you could filter out unwanted stuff such as spam, trivial gossip and the like, but not miss new things from new people.

    For me, Twitter is still mostly noise with a tiny amount of signal.