Use Twitter lists to follow top tweets

Matthew Hanson | Guides, Windows 7, Windows Vista | 01/07/2010 10:55am
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Twitter is a great way to keep track of friends, favourite companies, football teams and more, and it’s taken off in a massive way.

But sometimes it can be difficult to see the more important tweets in between all the other Twitter feeds you’re following. Thankfully, Twitter has introduced a new lists feature. This means that you can group together some of the people you follow so that you can see at a glance only their tweets and not be distracted by the rest. So, for example, you could gather together the friends you know well in a list. Or, if you’re a follower of a particular team, you can gather together all the relevant football feeds in a list. During this tutorial, we’re going to show how you can make a list of your friends’ tweets.

Step-by-step: Create a Twitter list

1 Get used to lists
When you log into Twitter, the right-hand column has always shown who you’re following, and how many are following you. But now it also offers a clickable link to show you which lists are following you. In other words, how many people have chosen to add you to a list, In this example, I’m followed by 20 lists.

2 Create a list
In your Twitter profile (you can navigate to this using the links at the top of the page if you’re not sure how to access it), click on the Lists button. Because I don’t have any lists set up already, the only option available is to create a new list, so join me in doing that.

3 Name your list
Now you see this window. Give your list a name depending on what you want the list to do, then fill in a description. As you’ll see, I’ve just called mine Friends. You can then choose whether to make the list private – just for you – or public, so that other people can follow that list should they wish.

4 Profile listed
Finally, click Create List in the dialogue box. Now you’re returned to your profile and shown a congratulatory message at the top of the screen. Your profile itself shows that you have made a list and you can click the link to see the current status of that list should you wish.

5 View your list
Clicking on the link to see your list shows you this screen. As you can see, the list itself is pretty empty at the moment – the only thing it’s following is my own tweets. We’ll rectify this in the next step. Note that using the links in the top-right, you can edit or delete your lists at any time.

6 Add people to your list
Now we want to get some extra people on to our list. As you can see, I’m already following @stablesjames, but I want to add him to the list I’ve just created. To do this, click the Lists menu, then you see a checkbox next to my Friends list (there would be several if I had multiple lists).

7 Check the box
Now place a check in the box – again, if you want to add them to multiple lists, this is possible. You’ll see a confirmation on the profile page that they’re included in one of your lists. Repeat this process on the profile pages of anybody else you want to add to your list.

8 And that’s it!
Once you’ve added a selection of people, you see a list page similar to this one. I’ve added nine friends to this list so far. The best thing about Twitter lists is that they really cut down on clutter and help you notice the tweets that you really want to keep an eye out for.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 1st, 2010 at 10:55 am and is filed under Guides, Windows 7, Windows Vista. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.