Twitter Lists Explained

Martin Brinkmann
Nov 3, 2009
Updated • Jan 4, 2018
Companies, Internet, Twitter
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Twitter introduced a new feature called Twitter Lists recently. Before Twitter Lists, Twitter users could only look at messages of individual users. They could look up messages posted by a friend, work colleague or a family member for instance, but not messages from more than one account at a time.

If you for instance wanted to find the most influential Twitter users in politics or technology, you would have to do a lot of research off-site to find the names that you are looking for, and did not have a good way of keeping track of these accounts as you could not really put them into a group.

Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists introduces a new feature that third party websites have been offering for a while. A comprehensive option to build a list of Twitter users on any subject. This can be a list of all students in business 101, a list of local politicians who use Twitter, a list of the world's most popular thinkers, or all of your family members or work colleagues.

The main benefit of this approach is that someone can access the public messages of all the Twitter users that are on that list directly on the Twitter Lists page. It is possible to subscribe to a Twitter list to receive the usual updates when someone on the list posts a new message.

To sum it up: Twitter Lists makes it easier to combine the messages of various Twitter users under one roof without having to filter through additional noise that is created by messages that they receive in their standard Twitter Account.

There is still one question to be answered: How can someone find the best lists without having to manually look at the pages of Twitter users? The answer, at least for lists of prominent Twitter users, is Listorious. The service maintains a list of (currently) 140 Twitter lists sorted in categories like media, news, marketing, health or finance.

listorious

This is a good starting point to find lists of prominent Twitter users like all verified NFL players who use Twitter, journalists who cover finance and business or thought leaders of this world. On the other hand; You won't find your high-school's teachers there.

Update: Listorious is no longer available, the website returns a 404 not found error. We are not aware of any alternatives.

Creating a Twitter List

twitter lists

To create a list on Twitter, click on the profile icon near the top, and then on lists on the menu that opens up. Here you can click on the create new list button to get started.

Lists can be public or private, and once you have created a list, you can start adding people to it using the search that is displayed to you on the next page.

twitter lists

You need to click on the three dots menu icon next to a Twitter account, and select the "add or remove from lists" option to add or remove that account.  Accounts can be added to multiple lists, and you may create new lists on the "add to list" page as well.

You may open your lists on Twitter at any time, and add or remove members of that list from it.

To delete a list, select the list on Twitter's Lists page, and click on the delete button that is displayed near the top then.

delete twitter list

Additional information about lists is available on Twitter's support website.

Summary
Article Name
Twitter Lists Explained
Description
The guide explains what Twitter Lists are, how you can create public and private lists, how to add Twitter users, and how to edit or delete lists.
Author
Publisher
Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. The Dark Lady said on July 9, 2023 at 11:19 am
    Reply

    Martin, I would appreciate that you do not censor this post, as it’s informative writing.

    Onur, there is a misleading statement “[…] GIFs are animated images …”. No, obviously you don’t seem to have take much notice of what you were told back in March regarding; Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).

    For example, https://www.ghacks.net/2023/03/31/whats-gif-explanation-and-how-to-use-it/#comment-4562919 (if you had read my replies within that thread, you might have learnt something useful). I even mentioned, “GIF intrinsically supports animated images (GIF89a)”.

    You linked to said article, [Related: …] within this article, but have somehow failed to take onboard what support you were given by several more knowledgeable people.

    If you used AI to help write this article, it has failed miserably.

  2. KeZa said on August 17, 2023 at 5:58 pm
    Reply

    AI is stupid, and it will not get any better if we really know how this all works. Prove me wrong.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IYl1sTIOHI

  3. Database failure said on August 18, 2023 at 5:21 pm
    Reply

    Martin, [#comment-4569908] is only meant to be in: [https://www.ghacks.net/2023/07/09/how-to-send-gifs-on-iphone-two-different-ways/]. Whereas it appears duplicated in several recent random low-quality non relevant articles.

    Obviously it [#comment-4569908] was posted: 9 July 2023. Long before this thread even existed… your database is falling over. Those comments are supposed to have unique ID values. It shouldn’t be possible to duplicate the post ID, if the database had referential integrity.

  4. Howard Pearce said on August 25, 2023 at 12:24 pm
    Reply

    Don’t tell me!

    Ghacks wants the state to step in for STATE-MANDATED associations to save jobs!!!

    Bring in the dictatorship!!!

    And screw Rreedom of Association – too radical for Ghacks maybe

  5. Howard Allan Pearce said on September 7, 2023 at 9:13 am
    Reply

    GateKeeper ?

    That’s called “appointing” businesses to do the state’s dirty work!!!!!

    But the article says itself that those appointed were not happy – implying they had not choice!!!!!!

  6. owl said on September 7, 2023 at 9:50 am
    Reply

    @The Dark Lady,
    @KeZa,
    @Database failure,
    @Howard Pearce,
    @Howard Allan Pearce,

    Note: I replaced the quoted URI scheme: https:// with “>>” and posted.

    The current ghacks.net is owned by “Softonic International S.A.” (sold by Martin in October 2019), and due to the fate of M&A, ghacks.net has changed in quality.
    >> ghacks.net/2023/09/02/microsoft-is-removing-wordpad-from-windows/#comment-4573130
    Many Authors of bloggers and advertisers certified by Softonic have joined the site, and the site is full of articles aimed at advertising and clickbait.
    >> ghacks.net/2023/08/31/in-windows-11-the-line-between-legitimate-and-adware-becomes-increasingly-blurred/#comment-4573117
    As it stands, except for articles by Martin Brinkmann, Mike Turcotte, and Ashwin, they are low quality, unhelpful, and even vicious. It is better not to read those articles.
    How to display only articles by a specific author:
    Added line to My filters in uBlock Origin: ghacks.net##.hentry,.home-posts,.home-category-post:not(:has-text(/Martin Brinkmann|Mike Turcotte|Ashwin/))
    >> ghacks.net/2023/09/01/windows-11-development-overview-of-the-august-2023-changes/#comment-4573033

    By the way, if you use an RSS reader, you can track exactly where your comments are (I’m an iPad user, so I use “Feedly Classic”, but for Windows I prefer the desktop app “RSS Guard”).
    RSS Guard: Feed reader which supports RSS/ATOM/JSON and many web-based feed services.
    >> github.com/martinrotter/rssguard#readme

  7. Anonymous said on September 14, 2023 at 6:41 pm
    Reply

    We all live in digital surveillance glass houses under scrutiny of evil people because of people like Musk. It’s only fair that he takes his turn.

  8. Anonymous said on September 18, 2023 at 1:31 pm
    Reply

    “Operating systems will be required to let the user choose the browser, virtual assistant and search engine of their choice. Microsoft cannot force users to use Bing or Edge. Apple will have to open up its iOS operating system to allow third-party app stores, aka allow sideloading of apps. Google, on the other hand, will need to provide users with the ability to uninstall preloaded apps (bloatware) from Android devices. Online services will need to allow users to unsubscribe from their platform easily. Gatekeepers need to provide interoperability with third-parties that offer similar services.”

    Wonderful ! Let’s hope they’ll comply with that law more than they are doing with the GDPR.

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