The basics of twitter lists

Twitter gives you the ability to create up to 20 lists, each having a maximum number of 500 members.

Each list can be "private", in which case only you can see it, or "public", in which case everyone can see it.

You can follow a public list, without following the individual members.

Following a list does not mean the tweets of list members will show up on your "home" page.

It's easy to add people to one or more lists. On twitter.com you just click the lists icon, get the drop down menu of your lists, and check the ones to which you want to add the person. In tweetdeck desktop you just go to user>add to group or list>lists and check off the lists to which you want to add the person.

What's not so easy is maintaining the lists, especially if they are lengthy, as twitter supplies no effective tool for that, and application developers have been slow to create one (See Tools for managing twitter lists). If you wanted to prune a list, or move people from one list to another, you may find it quite time consuming.

There are many uses for the lists. People are evolving new ones all the time.

Most people seem to use them, in one way or another, as a means of managing their reading more efficiently. E.g., in Tweetdeck desktop one can set up a separate column for any list, making it easier to concentrate one's reading on a certain group of peeps at any given moment. Some folks might have a list of high volume tweeters, or a list of favorite tweeters, or a list of conversational tweeters, etc.

It is now even possible to send spam with a list, but if anyone ever did that to me I would unfollow and block them immediately.

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