Recently, Twitter introduced the concept of lists - a simple way to put groups of your followers in one place. Third-party tools such as TweetDeck have provided similar functionality for months, but these tend to do so as a private feature, in that you can only see your own groups/lists. However, the built-in lists on the Twitter website can be either public or private.

Initially, the feedback sounded quite good. I found lists useful and a lot of the people I follow posted mostly positive comments about the feature. To give you some idea of the timeline, I noticed lists on my Twitter account on October 15th, when Mashable posted that "Twitter lists are live!".

A couple of weeks later, Chris Brogan criticised Twitter lists, calling them "exclusionary". This was mentioned in a further post by The Inquistr, who called Twitter lists an "A-list popularity contest". However, Scobleizer defended the idea, saying that we can't all be in every list. (For the record, I'm with Scobleizer on this one: I find lists useful.)

There are some great comments on both sides of the fence (although not on The Inquisitr, who seem to have little more than an "echo" section, listing tweets from people who shared the very post you're reading at the time - not much use really). However, I think what really stood out for me was this comment from Chris Brogan:

Funny how people are all panty-bunched about how @scobleizer or I view lists. Who cares? Advance the game. Make meaning.

Chris, if you don't care what people think about your views, why post them on a blog where comments are enabled? I fully accept that not everyone agrees on everything, and that not everyone will have an opinion on everything. However, this is a discussion you started!

Look at it this way: Imagine I walk up to someone and declare that my first impressions of Google Wave have not been overwhelmingly positive. They tell me that actually, Google Wave is a great tool, but it's probably better as a business tool. I tell them I don't care what they think, I was just telling them what I think. And I don't really care what they think of what I think!

Granted, some might view Google Wave as far more interesting than a single feature of Twitter. But what interests me may not interest the next person, and vice versa. I am curious to find out how people use Twitter lists. And I am quite happy to discuss the pros and cons. If this doesn't interest you - that's fine - but then why blog about it?

Am I missing something really obvious here?

Just so you know: comments are very welcome, and I do care what you have to say.

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