Twitter begins beta trial of Lists feature

Twitter Lists will be public by default

Twitter has started rolling out its new Lists feature to selected users registered with the micro-blogging firm.

Twitter Lists was announced in early October, and will let users organise contacts into groups and keep people closely updated with selected accounts.

Users can also make their Lists private if they do not want other users to know how they have organised their contact base, but otherwise the lists will be public by default to allow other users to subscribe to them.

Most Twitter users will not yet be able to see the new feature. "You are part of a small group receiving this feature, so don't tweet about it yet," the firm told its beta group.

Reports have said that a Lists tab appears on the right hand side of a beta user's Twitter accounts where their other details are displayed.

Users can then click on the tab to visit a new page where they can choose to make public or private Lists or view Lists in which they have been mentioned.

Beta users have also said that a new button has been added to their Followers lists so that they can quickly add people to the Lists they are creating.

The only problem with the service at this stage is the lack of search in order to create Lists. This means that the creation of Lists for those that have hundreds or thousands of followers is likely to be a time consuming process.

A Twitter user under the profile name of 'msilacboeder' said that she had created a "coolest peeps" List that she has kept private.

Another user called 'FreshPeel' said that he was finding the public Twitter List more useful than Twitter's tradition of FollowFriday, where users recommend to others the top five people to add to their contacts.