Comments on: The list of my brethren

By: D. Jason Fleming (deejf) 's status on Thursday, 05-Nov-09 00:29:21 UTC - Identi.ca

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:29:29 +0000

[...] Why I haven’t started any TwitterLists: these would be my three classifications, too [...]

By: CGHill

CGHill — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:06:18 +0000

You'd be surprised how many people are mystified by the "Almost Yogurt" category around here. Or maybe you wouldn't. Inexplicably, I'm on 13 lists now, though most of them seem to be state-related, a characteristic which is at least comprehensible.

By: fillyjonk

fillyjonk — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:54:07 +0000

If I were going to do a “list feature,” I’d do exactly what sya suggested: pick random, vaguely Aristotelian categories and use them. And not tell anyone what they meant. (because they wouldn’t, actually, mean anything.)

By: CGHill

CGHill — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:59:50 +0000

Oh, I’d have to do that, just to avoid being Extremely Obvious.

I know a few people who would qualify as durian, but they’re not being followed. :)

By: sya

sya — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:39:42 +0000

I suspect that when December 1 rolls around, my listed numbers will go back to zero and my followers back to pre-October levels.

As for your putative list categories, I’d be quite amused if they were disguised by semi-enigmatic labels like “ice-cream sundae”, “broccoli”, “durian” and “U-235″.

By: CGHill

CGHill — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:33:57 +0000

And by “fairly large,” I read “100 percent.” Which is another reason not to implement such a thing. I am required by the Contemporary Guy Code, however, to indicate my level of shallowness on a regular basis. :)

By: fillyjonk

fillyjonk — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:51:58 +0000

And your original list designations might just be a way of getting a fairly large number of women ticked off at you. (Some for being on the first list; some for being on the second. Sadly, we are like that sometimes.)

By: Terry

Terry — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:29:24 +0000

I’m with Andrea – I haven’t figured the thing out, either. But I’m definitely not their target market. I only follow 50 people, most of whom I have some other acquaintance with (blog, such as you, etc), with the remainder being news outlets and tech-junkie feeds.

Of course, I’m not very social media – my Facebook friends are all, well, friends, online and ftf.

By: CGHill

CGHill — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:21:52 +0000

I knew someone had to find value in this feature. (But will it be worth anything on the first of December?)

By: sya

sya — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:16:53 +0000

I’m starting to use the list feature to connect to people I don’t necessarily want to follow all the time. Which is great for Nanowrimo. I don’t want my tweet stream to be constantly bombarded with word count updates from several hundred participants and their mother. (Of course, there’s me, but I try to limit my wordage squeeing to a couple times a day rather than every ten minutes.)

By: CGHill

CGHill — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:46:37 +0000

If it’s any consolation, practically no one observed the “don’t tweet about it” restriction.

I’m thinking that it’s just one more complication that I may not need; I’m not so overwhelmed by tweetage that I have to spend any time trying to organize it further.

By: Andrea Harris

Andrea Harris — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:39:02 +0000

I can’t figure the darn thing out. I have no idea what to do with it. And the message I got said “don’t tweet about it” because it’s still in beta or something, so I can’t even tweet any other tweeters for advice.

Bah, social media sucks.

By: fillyjonk

fillyjonk — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:22:11 +0000

Mine would probably be more of a Venn diagram: people I “know” from Ravelry, people whose blogs I read, people I “know” from other realms of life – and all of those can have possible “ands” linking them.

By: Eric

Eric — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:53:01 +0000

I agree. For me, lists are a solution in search of a problem.

OTOH, I don’t have the problem of trying to manage tens of thousands (or even tens of tens) of Twitter contacts, so I’m probably not the user they were targeting when they came up with the idea.