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Twitter lists are the new gadget for anybody who wants to spend even more time on twitter. There are many advantages in using other peoples’ lists of interest, but so far I only found setting up my own a bother. My lists so far are mainly filled with people who have listed me or who recently had contacted me directly. As an excuse for my laziness I might put forward my follower count.

You are able to create one or more lists. So far, I have created four lists of my own; one is for writers, one for visual artists, on for musicians, and a hodgepodge one with people that are active tweeters. As they contain mainly my followers, they are not (yet) much use to me, but they might help me later if looking for something specific, though I think the search feature on twitter will be faster.

When creating a list, or editing it for that matter, you have a choice of making it a private list accessible only by you, or a public one that may be seen and followed in turn by everybody.

You are able to list anybody on your list irrespectively of whether they follow you or you follow them. You may also put people with private accounts on your lists, but you will only see their tweets if you are an accepted follower, i.e. your request to follow has been accepted and is not pending anymore. But you are unable to list people that have blocked you from following them.

As there are already many public lists out, you in turn might find it useful to follow lists of other users. In following other users’ lists, you may follow the lists of people you follow, who are following you, or with whom you have no connection at all. Again, private accounts keep their lists hidden until you are an accepted follower, and you can’t access any lists from users that have blocked you.

So far, you had the possibility to access the tweets of users who block you by going to their personal twitter page, but as you had no possibility to save them on twitter, that meant keeping a separate list on your pc or laptop. Now you can follow a list in which such users are included and thereby read their tweets easily.

For people who publish original content such as writers, visual artists, and musicians, this is a valuable tool. As there is normally no reason to block somebody, blockers are suspect of using your original content for their own use and keeping you away from that information by making access to their tweets complicated. But no longer, as you may now check their tweets by the simple means of following another user’s list.

And for anybody who would like to be included in one of my lists, please send me an @-message to my twitter account with the information which lists you would like to be included in.

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