Twitter confuses with new Lists feature

Twitter is currently rolling out its Lists feature to more users.

Two weeks ago, the firm rolled out the management tool to a select beta testing team and asked them not to spread the word.

Now Lists is being made generally available, although many users appear confused by the product, mainly because the firm is not making it clear on how it can be used.

Lists lets Twitter users organise their contacts into groups and keep people closely updated with select accounts of their choice.

Users can also to 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.

The main benefit of Lists is it finally allows users to manage their accounts and all of their followers, and to tap into different contact groups depending on the occasion.

Lists further allow Twitter users to follow others' tweets without having them listed in their Following contacts.

Also for Twitter users that envy other Twitter contacts for getting all the best news first, they now might be given more of an idea which contacts to follow to be kept in the loop.

30 Oct 2009