It’s now been a few weeks since Twitter released its lists functionality to everyone. It’s given the millions of people a chance to better organize the stream of information that flows endlessly from Twitter, and it’s safe to say that lists have been a big hit.
Twitter isn’t the only one who sees the value in lists. For several months now AboutUs has offered the ability to create topical lists of websites, allowing anyone to summarize and tag sites that matter to them.
Why Lists Matter
Twitter lists are feature that grew out of that community’s need to give order to a huge ecosystem of information. AboutUs lists revolve around websites instead of Twitter accounts for people or organizations, but the goal is the same.
A list is a really fairly boring tool for organizing information. But if you add the ability to edit and share lists broadly, they become a vital tool for organizing a community or a body of knowledge that is too big to handle with search alone.
Making Lists Really Editable
Lists have clearly taken off, but they’re not perfect yet. Dawn Foster, friend and Portland-based mistress of all things community management-related, wrote at WebWorkerDaily about some fascinating suggestions for improving Twitter lists.
Naturally the one that sparked our interest the most was the idea of making lists publicly editable. This public editability would be selective, and might be limited to your followers if you like. Anyone can edit a list on AboutUs by default, but we definitely encourage list keepers to take responsibility for subjects they care about.
Currently Twitter lists are limited to one person’s notion of the most important additions. Part of what makes certain lists important are the people who’ve created them (such as Robert Scoble’s list of tech pundits). But with sites such as Listorious emerging, many lists are becoming important public resources regardless of who curates them.
Who is doing most of the work to curate a list is clearly important. But here at AboutUs, we’ve attempted to strike a balance between letting someone curate a list and leaving room for collaboration. Getting that balance right is the key to making lists a sustainable model for any community, and it’s why we agree with Dawn’s suggestion for Twitter lists.
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Relative to the value of a non-profit called Nothing but Nets; I wonder if someone has figured out that dying from malaria is less painful than dying from starvation
James, I am sorry, all though your comment looks interesting, I have no idea what it means. Please clarify. Best, Mark
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