How Twitter Lists on Tweetdeck Changed My Strategy

Has Twitter Lists changed your “Who do I follow?” strategy?

When Twitter rolled out its Lists feature a month ago, I wasn’t excited: One more place to sort and categorize people, no added value. But when Tweetdeck (my Twitter client of choice) integrated Twitter Lists recently, that changed.

Tweetdeck Groups: A Helpful But Imperfect Filter

Until now, I’ve used Tweetdeck’s “Groups” feature as a filter. I have a column for Charlotte-area folks, one for “A-Listers” (I hate that term), a few industry-specific Groups, and several search columns.

But adding someone to a group required that I follow that person. As a result, my “Following” count kept climbing, and despite my filters, it got harder and harder to find, observe and join conversations relevant to me. It also meant more auto-DMs and Twitter spam.

Tweetdeck’s integration of Twitter Lists changes that. You can add someone to a Twitter List without following them. Their Tweets appear in the corresponding Tweetdeck column, so you’ll still see their conversations.

To Unfollow or Not to Unfollow?

Crass as it sounds, I’m unfollowing some people. Aaron Strout, whom I respect very much, uses a different strategy. There’s no right or wrong — use the strategy that fits you. My own strategy continues to change, but I stick to a few core principles to decide who to follow on Twitter.

Here’s my Charlotte Twitter List, in case you’re curious.

I hope that by unfollowing some people, I’ll actually be able to listen to them better — indeed, listen to everyone better. It means I’ll need to filter more intelligently. It also means I’ll have to pay better attention to each stream…and make decisions about how to allocate a finite amount of time to each stream.

If I’m not following you — or if I’ve unfollowed you — don’t be afraid to @reply me. Help me get to know you! Intelligent conversation about what’s relevant to me (PR, media, publishing, marketing, journalism, politics, etc.) is the best way to engage me.

Feedback

How has your follow strategy evolved since Twitter rolled out Lists? If you’re a Tweetdeck user, has the integration of Twitter Lists changed your strategy at all? What’s more important to you — observing/joining a conversation that’s relevant to you, or following someone based on courtesy, acquaintance, locality, or another factor?

Will my new follow strategy work? Would it work for you? Do the new features from Twitter and Tweetdeck make it any easier to filter the information coming out of the firehose?

I’d love to hear your comments.

http://twitter.com/eugmandel Eugene Mandel

Not only I think it's OK to unfollow people when sorting them into lists, I believe that “follow” feature will become obsolete. I am re-organizing my use of Twitter arounf lists alone: http://shadesmodel.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/lis…
eugmandel

Not only I think it's OK to unfollow people when sorting them into lists, I believe that the “follow” feature will become obsolete. I am re-organizing my usage of Twitter around lists alone: http://shadesmodel.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/lis…
http://www.capitalfellow.com capitalfellow

Rather than having a general list around a city I further segment within the geographic area by their topic. I would like to further segment local restaurants from local food bloggers but I've maxed out the number of lists my account can have. My hope is that this limit is just arbitrary & the list feature was designed to be scalable to a larger number of lists per user.

As clients implement the list feature & since lists can be followed I think the next development will be authoritative list by topic. Not necessarily the largest lists (ie: every social media 'expert') but the most refined & value adding. Those users that curate such lists will likely get a boost in 'whuffie'
http://twitter.com/ScottHepburn Scott Hepburn

Good feedback, Scott. I'm also micro-segmenting my Charlotte list, but keeping those lists private until I have them a little more fleshed out. I'm sure I'll roll them out publicly soon.

It'll be interesting to see how the “authoritative lits” concept plays out. When lists were only on Twitter.com, following someone else's list was a nuisance. Now that you can follow them in Tweetdeck, you may be right: Building a good list will earn you capital, just like finding and Tweeting good content does.
http://www.capitalfellow.com capitalfellow

Rather than having a general list around a city I further segment within the geographic area by their topic. I would like to further segment local restaurants from local food bloggers but I've maxed out the number of lists my account can have. My hope is that this limit is just arbitrary & the list feature was designed to be scalable to a larger number of lists per user.

As clients implement the list feature & since lists can be followed I think the next development will be authoritative list by topic. Not necessarily the largest lists (ie: every social media 'expert') but the most refined & value adding. Those users that curate such lists will likely get a boost in 'whuffie'
http://mediaemerging.com Scott Hepburn

Good feedback, Scott. I'm also micro-segmenting my Charlotte list, but keeping those lists private until I have them a little more fleshed out. I'm sure I'll roll them out publicly soon.

It'll be interesting to see how the “authoritative lits” concept plays out. When lists were only on Twitter.com, following someone else's list was a nuisance. Now that you can follow them in Tweetdeck, you may be right: Building a good list will earn you capital, just like finding and Tweeting good content does.
http://www.facebook.com/stroutmeister Aaron Strout

Scott – as you know, I always appreciate a differing viewpoint. God knows I've certainly considered unfollowing many folks on Twitter in order to get down to the 200-300 people that I know best. But at the end of the day, I continue to have the value outweigh the burden.

One of the things that's interesting for me is the fact that while I like the idea of not needing to “follow” someone to see them on a list (which can then me viewed via Tweetdeck), there is a certain element of being able to DM folks i'm connected with, especially since most are pretty respectful of not overusing that feature.

With that said, there are some people I've not followed in the past based based on their lack of reciprocity but I may consider adding them back into the mix via a list.
http://www.facebook.com/stroutmeister Aaron Strout

Scott – as you know, I always appreciate a differing viewpoint. God knows I've certainly considered unfollowing many folks on Twitter in order to get down to the 200-300 people that I know best. But at the end of the day, I continue to have the value outweigh the burden.

One of the things that's interesting for me is the fact that while I like the idea of not needing to “follow” someone to see them on a list (which can then me viewed via Tweetdeck), there is a certain element of being able to DM folks i'm connected with, especially since most are pretty respectful of not overusing that feature.

With that said, there are some people I've not followed in the past based based on their lack of reciprocity but I may consider adding them back into the mix via a list.
http://www.facebook.com/stroutmeister Aaron Strout

Scott – as you know, I always appreciate a differing viewpoint. God knows I've certainly considered unfollowing many folks on Twitter in order to get down to the 200-300 people that I know best. But at the end of the day, I continue to have the value outweigh the burden.

One of the things that's interesting for me is the fact that while I like the idea of not needing to “follow” someone to see them on a list (which can then me viewed via Tweetdeck), there is a certain element of being able to DM folks i'm connected with, especially since most are pretty respectful of not overusing that feature.

With that said, there are some people I've not followed in the past based based on their lack of reciprocity but I may consider adding them back into the mix via a list.