Twitter lists for noobies

Today's guest post comes from my friend, Andy, over at The Digitante. I asked Andy if I could re-post this after I asked my followers on Twitter if anyone understood the new Twitter lists feature. Andy replied and told me he had just written about Twitter lists on his blog and agreed to let me re-post it for Noobie's readers. So now, without further ado... Twitter lists.

Twitter started rolling out a new feature about 2-3 weeks ago called lists. Basically, you can group together your followers and others so your Twitter buddies are more organized. Let's check out the new features.

Setting up a list

The Digitante currently follows 144 people on Twitter. Before lists came along, those people were a nebulous cloud of people. They only order to the group was the order that they were added to my followers. With lists, it is easy to toss people into buckets that you create.

Notice you can sort people into public or private lists. This is handy for throwing your friends and family together. Chances are you are the only one who need access to that list. However, you may want to share a list of tweeters who have a hobby similar to you. My favorite hobby is tech stuff.

Now that I've added a few tweeters to my tech list, you can find The Digitante on Twitter and add my list of tech tweets to your Twitter.

What does this do for me?

A couple of things:

• Prioritize - As you get more and more followers, it gets hard to keep up on everyone's tweets. I generally have a hierarchy of tweet reading on my personal account: buddies, Indianapolis people, Tech, and if I get around to it, celebrities. By dividing them up, I can skip the celebs if I'm a bit too busy.
• Share interests - As mentioned above, I can share hobbies with others or check out their Twitter friends who have similar interests to me. On the side, The Digitante is a bit of a beer connoisseur. I find out about all kinds of small craft breweries and the various beers they have to offer through my acquaintances on my beer list.

Biggest drawback?

For me, there are no problems on Twitter's end, however, I use my BlackBerry with a program called Twitterberry. Unfortunately, there is no way to use lists on Twitterberry yet so I am currently still stuck reading all the tweets that come along.

Andy has been a technophile for years and recently decided to share his love of gadgets through his business, The Digitante. You can read about The Digitante's adventures through the digital landscape at http://www.thedigitante.com and feel free to catch him on Twitter as well. Be sure to add @mrnoobie and @thedigitante to your newly minted tech list on Twitter.