Twitter Lists - A spammers new best friend?

So I am one of the lucky guys who ended up with early access to the Twitter Lists functionality and so far I am loving it.  Not necessarily from a functionality standpoint (it’s really bare bones but at Klout we are building some cool stuff to make it more useful) but from a data perspective.  Everyone has always been obsessed with follower count (huge mistake in my opinion) but now the first thing you’ll notice with lists is that the count of lists you are on is displayed right next to your follower count.

Someone adding you to a list is way more meaningful then just a follow.  Not sure yet if Twitter is going to email you when you are added to a list but it would be hard not to click through and see what lists you are on when that number increments.  What happens though when a spammer creates a “50 People Who Should Visit My Online Pharmacy” or “People I Can Teach to Get Rich From the Comfort of their Home” list and adds you to it?

Almost every person I speak to who is relatively new Twitter asks “who are these people that are following me?”.  A stat I once heard from the Twitter team is that a spammer lasts about 8 hours in their system (this was a while ago so I am sure it has improved greatly).  It’s funny that I think lists were created to combat these spammers and improve the signal to noise ratio of Twitter.  I do think lists will help in surfacing interesting content but I believe it adds a new channel for spammers to annoy the rest of us.

Are Twitter list going to encourage people to have multiple Twitter accounts?

For the last couple weeks I’ve been part of a lucky group of testers with access to Twitter’s new list functionality.  In case you some how missed it, Twitter lists are going to allow any user to curate a list that any other user can then follow.  The key here though is that when you follow a list you are not necessarily following each of the people on that list.  The list themselves have a follower count and each user now will have a count of how many lists they are on.

Right now there are only a few people with access to the list functionality out there creating list but I already find myself looking a the list count of every user’s profile I visit.  I believe that the count of lists people are on is going to quickly overtake follower count in terms of importance in most people’s eyes.  I also believe that this change is going to have a big impact in how people use Twitter.

Once access to the list functionality goes public I believe that many people will create lists about the topics and companies they are passionate about.  Some of these lists will grow very popular and being on these list will be quite prestigious.  Once you know you are on an important list about a specific topic I think it’s going to be difficult to not think about how relevant each of your tweets are to that topic.  While many will say that this is a good thing as it will cut the noise of people on Twitter talking about what they had for dinner, I worry that we’ll lose some of the intimacy the medium now creates.

Right now I would say about 40% of my followers are close friends that care about what I did on the weekend or if I had a safe flight.  I don’t want to ignore them or miss the small things going on in their life.  At the same time, I love technology and the start up world and want to have a voice in that space.  I am starting to wonder if I am going to end up needing multiple twitter accounts to accomplish both goals?  It’s not necessarily that big of a deal to manage multiple Twitter accounts and in the end it might not be a bad thing as it could make following me (or anyone for that matter) a more pleasant experience if you could pick which slice of their life you you want to engage with.  It will be interesting to see what changes and mutations this new feature introduces into the way we all use Twitter.

I like moving

Think I just found an apartment in San Francisco today.  I am getting close to being able to check all the most famous US cities off the list.

• Las Vegas
• Miami
• Los Angeles
• NYC
• San Francisco

At some point I need to live in Chicago and Boston and I will pretty much have things covered.