by Pat Gray

Created on: June 29, 2011   Last Updated: June 30, 2011

If you're a Twitter user who follows hundreds or even thousands of people, Twitter lists are the best way to organize your Twitter stream. However, there are other benefits of lists, from protecting your privacy to improving your access to the most popular social networking app around.

1) Organizing your Twitter life

The biggest benefit of Twitter lists is the ability to organize your Twitter stream, and your Twitter friends and acquaintances. You can add users to one or more lists depending on how you want to manage your stream, then dip into the tweets from that list alone, rather than trying to swim through thousands of unrelated posts.

A secondary effect of organizing your Twitter stream is the ability to organize users you are interested in. Keeping a list of your "core" Twitter friends or favorite tweeters makes it easier to stay in touch with the people you really care about.

Some list suggestions include:

- "Best of the Best" for your core Twitter friends or those who regularly share valuable information.

- "Pending" for users you may not want to continue following.

- "Just for fun" for jokes, videos or other recreational tweets.

2) Privacy

If you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings because they are - or are not - on one of your lists, you can create a private lists. If you want to keep an eye on tweets without having to actually follow someone, simply create a private list and add them, for example "IBNFB" (interesting but not following back) or "KYEC" (keep your enemies closer).

3) Get the most out of Twitter apps

Many Twitter apps, like Hootsuite use Twitter lists, and provide a user-friendly way of accessing multiple lists at the same time. HootSuite's interface displays multiple streams simultaneously based on your Twitter lists. If you have multiple accounts, you can display lists from those different accounts in the same window.

4)  Follow lists, not users

While you might not be interested in another Twitter user's posts, you may have an interest in the post of a of the people they follow. If they are using lists, you can opt to follow just that group of people, and of course other users can choose to follow one of your lists rather than your Tweets.

5) List RSS feed

It is also possible to create an RSS feed from a Twitter user's list. Simply enter the following URL:

http://api.twitter.com/1/OWNER/lists/LIST/statuses.a tom


replacing OWNER with the Twitter user's name and LIST with the list name.

According to the Sociable's Piers Dillon Scott, this capability exists now (June 2011) but is subject to change depending on how Twitter evolves.

Twitter is a useful tool, but can quickly become unmanageable without a bit of organization. Lists can help you stay organized, but they have other benefits, including getting more out of the Twitter experience.

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