Why I Don’t Like Twitter Lists

There’s an inherent problem with Twitter’s list function: it’s anti-social.

That’s right; it takes the “social” out of “social media.”

Now don’t get me wrong. I understand the allure and practicality of such lists. When they were introduced, it gave us a way to organize people in categories: “locals,” “marketing people,” “baseball fans.” It made managing your Twitter stream much more manageable. But it brought with it another problem.

Some people realized that by following lists, they could unfollow the individual people in those lists, and keep their lives neat and tidy. So rather than follow people, they follow groups of people. Makes sense. But, this presents a number of problems.

First, if the person being unfollowed finds out about it (and there are a number of services like Qwitter and IsFollow that let you know this) it can cause undue stress. All they know is that you are no longer following them.

Second, sometimes the person finds out when they try to send a direct message (DM) to a friend, and it gets rejected since you aren’t being followed.

I’ve seen this happen to friends, and to myself, and you begin to wonder what you did to hurt the other person’s feelings to cause them to unfollow you. There’s enough relational stress out there that we don’t need to add more.

Now I understand the need to organize and simplify your tweet stream. But following a list is NOT a substitute for individual following. It impedes the communication and dialogue process. There is nothing more frustrating when you try to DM a friend and it gets rejected as the result of them not following you. But you know that they MUST be following you somehow because they often converse with you. And they are also capable of DMing you because YOU are following them. It sends the message that a full two-way type of relationship isn’t important to them.

And for some people, the follower/following count can be important. If you are using Twitter for business, the number of followers you have can be an important analytics tool, especially when prospective clients look at your profile to see how you’re doing. The following/follower counts do not include lists. And while you CAN see lists they’ve created, you can’t see what lists they follow.

Also, if I begin following someone new, I often look at their following list to see which accounts they believe are worth following. If they are using lists rather than following individually, that can create a problem.

Now it is possible to do both. You CAN follow people individually and also organize them in groups, though I’ve had several friends report problems when they’ve created lists in third party apps like Tweetdeck and it has done the same thing. I don’t know exactly what they have done, and I’ve never experienced it myself, so I don’t know the logistics of that.

My solution?

1. Follow people. Be pro-social. If you want to see what someone is saying, just follow them! Don’t relegate them to a list. Show them that they are important to you.

2. If you need organization, use a third party app like Seesmic Desktop or Tweetdeck (to name a few) and create columns, not lists. These columns can sort your friends into any number of groups and make your feed extremely manageable.

3. If you must create lists, just don’t unfollow people. Be a good citizen, and above all, be social.

Have you had problems as the result of you or someone else using Twitter lists? Or while trying to create lists on third party apps?

Tagged as: Marketing, Social Media, Twitter