Twitter Lists Support: Management Status & Optimization Wishlist

ageor — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:31:52 +0000

I follow 2001 Twitter accounts (the limit Twitter inexplicably imposes for my number of followers). I have created some Twitter Lists and added some accounts in them, usually as I come across them. Twitter’s web interface leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to Lists management, so, this is a slow, painful process. I had also created groups in PeopleBrowsr, TweetDeck and PockeTwit. Having done part of the work to organize those I follow in Groups and Lists in a chaotic manner over time, I now wish for an easy way to bulk organize everything in Twitter Lists and be done with it. I wish for a Lists Manager that will let me optimize the process. While searching for it, I came across the following facts (please note that this is by no means a thorough survey; I just went through the clients I know of and use):

Clients that support Twitter Lists
- Seesmic for Windows now offers read only support
- SocialWhale offers read and add support on a per user basis, like Twitter
- PeopleBrowsr initially offered read only support and now also supports additions
- TweetDeck was the last to market but offers the best support so far, including read, easily add and export of its own Groups to Twitter Lists
Export the application’s Groups to Twitter Lists
- SocialWhale asks users to import their preexisting Groups to Lists at login
- TwitDeck fully supports copying Groups to Lists
- PeopleBrowsr initially did the opposite; it copied Twitter Lists to PB Groups. It does not do it in the right direction
Bulk-add accounts to Twitter Lists
- Twitdeck shows a selected Group, List or the complete list of followed accounts and allows to multiple-select-and-import any account from all friends, TweetDeck’s own Groups or Twitter Lists to a Twitter List
- PeopleBrowsr shows 16 accounts already in the Group or Twitter List with an “x” next to each one for one-by-one removal. To add an account to the List, one needs to manually type (part of) the names one by one and can’t bulk select them from a full list or PB’s own Groups
Applications’ own Groups vs. Twitter Lists management tools
- Oddly enough, both TwitDeck and PeopleBrowsr have different Managers for their own Groups and for Twitter List

The winner, so far, is TwitDeck; hands down. The race is not over, though and neither is my work, as I still have the PeopleBrowsr and PockeTwit groups to convert to Twitter Lists. So, I am waiting for them to add a competitive Lists Manager that not just gets the job done, it also removes some of the pain that goes with it. Some optimization suggestions to that extend:

Show the avatar, full name, site’s URL, following and followers along with account names

Long lists are difficult to handle just by a nick name.

Make the list auto resizing with the size of the window

The more the information available, the faster and easier the process.

Make it reliable and responsive

PeopleBrowsr often shows me a partial list of Twitter Lists and TwitDeck sometimes retries and fails to add accounts to Twitter Lists.

With Christmas and New Year around the corner, it’s a good time for wishes to come true… Meanwhile, I will update this post will any relevant information I come across, so check back.

DiPot: Ice Tea tech » lists

Twitter Lists Support: Management Status & Optimization Wishlist

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