10 Twitter Lists You Should Follow
Twitter Lists have rolled out to a majority of users on the site now and the uptake has been remarkable. Things will get truly interesting when lists can by turned into columns in 3rd party clients like Tweetdeck and Seesmic (one small client says it's shipped list support already and Tweetdeck says it's coming soon), when you can share items with particular lists exclusively (like you can on Facebook) and when you can search inside particular lists. Anyone who's worked with OPML files before is likely to find Twitter lists frustrating so far.
Let's operate under the assumption that Twitter's own implementation of lists will be overshadowed by more useful implementations of the lists API. In order to help you get ready for that future, here are ten lists we think particularly worth following.
Twitter Lists are exciting because curation of dynamic sources is exciting. This is a particularly accessible way to do what syndication geeks have been thrilled by for years.
Here are some of our favorite curated lists we've found so far. We offer some description of these lists based on what we know about their creators and the short titles the lists have been given. The fact that Twitter doesn't offer a field to describe lists makes me wonder who they talked to when building the feature. (Turns out this is coming next week.) A lot of things make me wonder that, in fact.
We've said before that groups are the secret weapon of the social web and we're excited to see this feature go live. Hopefully it will become more awesome with time.
Here are 10 cool lists we suggest you follow. We found most of these lists by thinking of awesome people on Twitter, then seeing what lists they are on.
- Patrick LaForge's "Linkers"
LaForge is an Editor at the New York Times and finds great links to share all the time. These are some of the people he finds them from. - Josh Elman's Awesome Social
Josh Elman recently jumped ship from working at Facebook to working at Twitter. Silicon Valley super-geeks took notice, because Elman is a smart and connected guy. Here's a nice big list of people he created that you should know if you're interested in the social web. - Robert Scoble's Founders
You want to see curation taken seriously? Watch Robert Scoble, any day of the week. Scoble has built out more great lists than you can shake a stick at and this one is a favorite of ours. It's a list of company founders on Twitter. Strange beasts, these are, but good to pay attention to. - Rebecca Leaman's Nonprofit Geeks
Rebecca Leaman works at WildApricot and she's created a great list of geeks focused on social good, nonprofit tech folks. These people should be on your radar. - Chris Grayson's Augmented Reality Peeps
We like Augmented Reality and so does Chris Grayson, a New York City mobile marketing consultant. He's put together a nice long list of people working in AR. If you get to know these people now, you'll probably be glad you did later. - Mike Taylor's XMPP List
Mike Taylor, also known as Bear, does XMPP work at Seesmic. His XMPP list is a nice collection of real-time web developers, without bandwagon-jumping marketing types. Looking for early hints about where the real-time web is going? This list is one place we're watching. - Raven Zachary's iPhone List
Raven Zachary is the founder of Small Society, an absurdly hot iPhone dev shop in Portland, Oregon. Raven is curating a giant list of all the people working on the iPhone that he can find. We'd love to see his list of just must-read iPhone folks, but this list is pretty cool too. - Christina Braden's Disability List
Christina Braden goes by the handle @advocate4all and her bio reads: "There will never be justice in the world until those who are not harmed are as indignant as those who are." Hell, yeah. If you want to read biting, insightful critiques of social injustices, a list of disability rights activists is a great place to find them. - Ben Turner's Anthropology List
Ben Turner is a renaissance man with a pretentious Twitter handle (@xeus) but his Anthropology list is an awesome collection of people studying digital culture. - The ReadWriteWeb Team List
Charming, intelligent, attractive and humble - the ReadWriteWeb team is a great source of news and analysis about bleeding edge trends and developments online. We'd love it if you'd follow us on Twitter and engage with us in conversation.
Those are some of our favorite lists. Have you spotted (or built) any red-hot lists we should be sure to know about as well? Let us know in comments. Listorious is a directory of lists, but isn't it more fun to see lists of lists from people you know and trust? Both have their place - hopefully this is just the beginning of a new period of Twitter fun.
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real-time
people and companies working w/ the real-time web
http://twitter.com/MarkGhuneim/real-time
I fear for those desktop clients, as the List API draft is so raw. Twitter posted a message on their dev board announcing some significant changes to the API coming soon, so any current implementations are going to need a bit of a rewrite when that goes live. I have an application live for list discovery and rating, but am waiting on the API updates to occur before announcing it.
Thanks for these, Marshall. If you're interested, I started some music-related Lists here: http://yvynyl.tumblr.com/post/228108877/yvynyl-twitter-lists
@iBraryGuy has posted his Librariana list for librarians, libraries, info pros, and those who work in the library industry. Please send suggestions! The list is here: http://twitter.com/iBraryGuy/librariana
John, I was *this close* to including a list of librarians too. We love librarians at RWW! Thanks for plugging a list here.
Thanks!
Thank you for sharing these incredible lists!
Here is an extensive list of over 300 educators and technology gurus on Twitter who share resources, answer questions, and are helpful to their Personal Learning Networks! Everyone can learn something from these Twitterers!
http://twitter.com/ShellTerrell/educator-pln
I tried twitter 8 months and found it to be nothing more than rss, but worse: mostly spam
so go ahead and hype it up some more, you are a sukker like other media who believe twitter is somehow great
i don't follow ashton, oprah, mchammer or any of those media hores...
suckker
I like what http://www.tlists.com/ is doing, and I'd like to see a simple Twitter List widget, very similar to the ones that Twitter has for Search, your own account and Favs.
Nice lists..Getting to know some awesome tweeps...Thanx for sharing..
Great lists. I especially like Scoble's founders and LaForge's linkers, I am a web dev "linker" myself.
I have created some lists with a handful of followers so far...
http://twitter.com/DotSauce/domainers - 48+ top domain name investors
http://twitter.com/DotSauce/apps - 45+ of the best Twitter apps
http://twitter.com/DotSauce/google - 22+ official Google profiles
Consider following.
:-) hi, hello Marshall Kirkpatrick
very interesting these Twitter Lists, I have already done some Lists too:
http://twitter.com/Oberhauser/social-media
http://twitter.com/Oberhauser/top-blogger
and I much like to work with it, by the way @rww are listed in both lists.
It would be interesting to know how Twitter will establish limits for Lists, I mean for sample how many Lists is one allowed to follow, how many Lists one is allowed to have, how many people can get added to one list per day/at all and so on ...
Maybe this could be a topic for one of your next posts about Twitter Lists.
Thanks for the post.
Stay tuned.
Ortwin Oberhauser
feel free to follow me on Twitter
http://www.twitter.com/Oberhauser
@Oberhauser
Created an attempt to bundle all official Ski Resorts Twitter accounts:
http://twitter.com/myslopes/skiresorts
For those interested in the TED conferences, I created two lists:
http://twitter.com/davestone/tedsters
http://twitter.com/davestone/tedx
:)
i don't thinck that twitter lists is the secret weapon for social web, maybe for only twitter users, then yes.
Social web need synergy and unification that could leverage a piece of highly customizable software deployed on the client, which will unifie all social networs in one main, standardized stream
I'm not a big fan of Twitter and think it's popularity will soon fade.
This barely scratches the surface at what is already out there... WOW! What a ride this is going to be going forward!!! BRING OUT YOUR LISTS!
@AlexisCeule
Some may enjoy the 'Booklovers' list curated by @foliosociety. http://twitter.com/foliosociety/booklovers
Also, @Jason_Pollock's 'Great Content' list is worth checking out. It has more subscribers than the @NYTimes lists, but fewer subscribers than the @rww team list. http://twitter.com/Jason_Pollock/great-content
Lists have opened a new level of discovery that is very exciting. Thank you for your excellent recommendations.
A comprehensive list of entrepreneurs, founders, ceo's, technologists, investors, social media and internet folk:
http://twitter.com/robertquaranta/business
@radq
A list of Red Cross and Red Crescent accounts - both US and International - on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/Federation/red-cross-red-crescent
Thanks for the list. Now I am following the RWW team list
It's only a small list, but it's for a small place called Wales, in the UK. It is an interesting list with interesting Welsh tweeps, for the benefit of those interested in Wales...
http://www.twitter.com/carmarthenshire/wales
Just wanted to share, as I really enjoy RWW :o)
I am compiling the following lists:
http://twitter.com/miss_mu/twitter-needs-bone-marrow
People who need bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cell donors (bone marrow donors, for short) who are also Twitter users. I may extend this to someone who spends a lot of time looking for a patient match.
http://twitter.com/miss_mu/actual-bone-marrow-donors
People who have been actual bone marrow donors. Not just registered, but gave a bit of themselves (it replenishes naturally).
http://twitter.com/miss_mu/bonemarrowdonation
Registries and organizations that aim to educate people about bone marrow donation, blood donation, create patient-centred appeals, register donors, and so on.
I've just started, but I will be keeping it updated as much as possible.
Hey! You missed the scientwist list - science types on Twitter, 500 of them! And then some in categories...
http://twitter.com/#/sciencebase/scientwists
Good list. Definitely worth the follow.
A bunch of author friends of mine are managing and promoting a list that follows authors, agents, publishers, writers, and book reviewers. It is currently ranked number 7, tagged "authors", on Listorious.com, and has steadily climbed over the last two weeks. In fact, it is currently A-Listed on the Listorious site, and has been for 5 straight days!
Come check it out! (Note: If you have suggestions for other authors, publishers, etc. that you would like to see added to the list so you can follow them too, don't hesitate to let me know.)
Twitter ID: DaronFraley
Link to twitter list: http://bit.ly/8GGi6u