A Closer Look at the Newly Launched Twitter List

So, I finally got this message when I logged in to Twitter this afternoon:

New! Lists. A great way to organize the people you follow and discover new and interesting accounts. (BETA)

You have the option to make your list private or public.

I think this is great for marketers! +1 point for Twitter and -1 for Facebook. Simply put, from a marketing perspective, I think Twitter’s new “List” feature is a much better move compared to Facebook’s new “Live Feed” minus “Highlights” feature. I have no doubt that Twitter’s new feature will boost virality while Facebook’s new feature has certainly done the opposite in the last 6 days.

Things are different, though, from the end user’s point-of-view. Personally, I don’t need my content on Facebook to go viral. As a matter of fact, I don’t want it to! As for Twitter–I’m not sure, yet. I’ve yet to see if being on someone’s list makes you more attractive to spammers and spambots. It makes you an easy target!

WARNING: Be careful when opening @replies especially when they do not have any message associated with them. It doesn’t matter if the profile picture looks non-suspicious. With the shortened URL’s nowadays, it’s hard to know which URL you can trust.

So, don’t get too excited just yet! Always remember to be careful with what you post. And to all those creating Twitter lists out there, think twice before adding someone to your public list.

Tweet responsibly. List wisely.

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