Twitter Lists Support: Management Status & Optimization Wishlist

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.