I told you that it wasn’t just a one-off!

Today’s Twitter List Index features a few changes, I hope that I can call them improvements. Check below for details.
Twitter List Index Nov 3

All of the URLs were cluttering the page, so I’ve removed them and simply hyperlinked the list names. I decided that the related links were extraneous to the purpose of the index, and anyways are easily discovered.

I’ve added a few columns in place of the links. Follow cat. is intended to provide a sense of how highly-followed the list creator’s account is. Category 5 list creators have more than one million followers. Category 4 is more than 100,000 followers, category 3 10,000 followers, category 2 more than 1,000 followers and category 1 has fewer than 1,000 followers. I’ll have a post coming up on why it might be valuable to compare list followings with the list creator’s following.

The lists column denotes how many lists the creating user account is included on. I collect this number daily, but of course it can potentially change substantially in a matter of minutes or hours. Some people have suggested that being included on many lists may be more beneficial to an individual’s social capital than being highly followed. I don’t know what I think about that, but I’ve added the metric for purposes of comparison.

Finally, each entry in the list is color coded to denote any changes in rank since the previous day’s list index. Green indicates a rise in rank, red a demotion, and gray indicates no change in rank. I considered adding more details about the percentage change, or how many ranks up/down a list has moved. Perhaps I will include those in further editions.

I definitely welcome any feedback from readers out there. You can leave comments on the blog, or find me on Twitter as @hornOKplease.

1 Comment »
Filed under: Features
Posted by: Richard
On: Wednesday, November 4th

Twitter lists have rolled out, and there is already a lot of conversation surrounding the feature. Like many, I think that lists will be a big step forward for Twitter in helping to corral conversations and mine the knowledge of subject-area experts. Combined with search and following, lists provide another vector for contextualizing information on the network.

Much of the early discussion on Twitter lists has focused on aspects of the social capital that is granted to users that find themselves placed on numerous lists. Already, there are dozens, or even hundreds, of users that can boast of being on more than 1,000 lists. Declarations of listings being the new followings are pouring down from the rafters, and indeed there are clear social consequences to being singled out individually as having some characteristic that earns you a spot on such a list.

But while I have so often before been happy to theorize to my heart’s content, in the case of lists I wanted to try something more proactive. I am going to embark on a project to monitor the most-followed lists and see what insights can be drawn from their movements. Taking inspiration from that list of lists that has attempted to draw meaning out of the chaos of the market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, I decided to create a Twitter Lists Index of 30 entries.

Twitter List Index Nov 2

The Twitter Lists Index will be compiled daily by me. The list shall consist of the 30 most-followed lists on Twitter, beginning with the most-followed and descending to the 3oth most-followed. In addition to the number of followers that a list has, the number of users that it itself follows will be included, as well as the username of the creator of the list and any relevant link to an official blog or other social media presence.

The means of compiling the list shall be subject to change and improvements moving forward. I have used a combination of sources for the inaugural Twitter Lists Index, including a script from Vobios and figures from Listorious. In all cases I have referred to list pages on Twitter to get the most up-to-date follower numbers. Obviously, these can change over time.

I’m quite interested to see what happens with Twitter Lists, and have a lot of other thoughts to share about the early batch of influential Twitter Lists. Let me know what you think about the subject in the comments, and please consider following me at @hornokplease.

No Comments »
Filed under: Announcements, Features
Posted by: Richard
On: Tuesday, November 3rd