Since it was turned on for all users late last week, everyone is talking about Twitter’s new Lists feature. Most people seem to like it, but some have no idea what it’s good for. Perhaps those people will understand a bit more about Lists potential with a new widget that Twitter has launched today.
The List Widget is exactly what you’d expect: A widget that you can place on your blog that displays a list of your choosing. One nice thing is that this can be a list you made or one any user has made (that is public). If you simply type in a user’s name, it will show their lists in a drop down menu. You then give the list a title, a caption, customize its look and feel, and you’re good to go.
But here’s why this widget is pretty cool: It basically is a way for you to create your own curated Twitter stream anywhere on the web. Obviously, you won’t be able to do things like tweet from it (though there is a reply button that comes up when you hover over a tweet — this directs you back to Twitter), but people are already making some great Twitter lists (like us and Scoble) and this is a great way to put them to work without having to go to Twitter itself.
You can choose how many tweets to show, set the intervals, hide hashtags — there are a good number of options. Best of all, these widgets offer something that Twitter itself doesn’t: Realtime auto-updating. Basically, this widget is kind of like a better, more customizable version of Twitter.com.
The List widget joins Twitter other widgets for profiles, search, and favorites. Find them all here. I’ve embedded our TechCrunch team list below.
Mixtweet also has cool, customizable real-time twitter list widgets. Check out the techcrunch widget here: (click on embed)
http://mixtweet.com/65550320
I like mixtweet and have been using it with http://www.tweetiator.com to build curated lists and then see who is tweeting my links. Sort of do-it-myself analytics. Will try tweetiator out with this too.
scuba is for lovers
It’s interesting to see that the widget offers more features than the Twitter website itself.
Can we expect more widgets from Twitter?
Seems like a pretty good Idea I can think of a lot of lists I need.
Today was a long day. Thanks for making it a little better
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I’m using Tweet Blender on two sites now (check them out). It’s really neat, but you have to add follows one by one, and it eats up your API quota really fast. (# of updates * # of follows).
Does the length of the Twitter List in any way affect API usage with this widget?
I don’t really understand why it took them so long. Any ideas?
@atombul – Most tech company engineering teams that I’ve worked for in the past generally don’t work on the weekends. Sorry for the delay from Friday to today.
Just replaced Tweet Blender with this one to test on one blog … this baby has performance problems. (Or the same API issue?). I’m seeing a blank frame now
Oh, and why on earth does Facebook Connect change the name to Facebook User randomly?
Adding those Twitter List Widgets on Netvibes is super simple.
On Netvibes.com:
1. Click on “Add Content”
2. Select “Essentials Widgets”
3. Add the “HTML” widget
4. Edit (on widget’s upper right corner) and paste Widget codes
5. OK
and voila
Enjoy.
Is there a maximum number of lists? There should be a lists of lists website
http://listorious.com/
Page view power play?
The article still doesn’t answer the main question: what lists are good for? OK, now I can put a subset of interesting people on my blog. So what? Why would I do it? All people I follow are interesting.
A some what similar post for “Twitter enrolls a new feature by grouping the users into user generated lists”
http://tusharvi...y-grouping.html
This is a nice widget from Twitter … and I hope i ll use it and make a list .. as I m not using it much now a days .. this is going to help twitter in driving more traffic to its site … a nice and an intelligent move .. hope we will get more widget in the future ..
Cheers,
Daina
Presently using the twitter widget on my blog. This should be interesting. Will give it a whirl !
- John
http://twitter....om/johnmorrison
This seems like a straightforward way to drive even more traffic towards twitter, and its an easy way for web dev’s to offer more dynamic content with little effort.
What’ll be even more interesting is seeing how the follower counts of lists will be documented. It seems like many pro-bloggers will be irked by the fact that a user following a list doesn’t count as a new follower for a member of that list. We’ll see if that changes over time…
Great Post MG~
Its been reported that Evan Williams and Biz Stone originally intended people to have a range of 150-200 followers.
Since many people have so many followers now it only makes sense to develop a lists feature so that we can group our followers.
The lists widget takes the twitter lists to a whole new level-WOW~
It’s amazing how fast things are evolving in the world of social media/networking.
Thanks for sharing this post~
-Al
@alferretti
Great Post MG~
Its been reported that Evan Williams and Biz Stone originally intended people to have a range of 150-200 followers.
Since many people have so many followers now it only makes sense to develop a lists feature so that we can group our followers.
The lists widget takes the twitter lists to a whole new level-WOW~
It’s amazing how fast things are evolving in the world of social media/networking.
Thanks for sharing this post~
K. That’s not a bad explanation. (I’m one of those people who didn’t get lists.) Though I’m still not sure if the list is about people or topics.
Probably I should stop being lazy and just go try to make one.
it would be really cool if you could tweet the whole list with one @reply.
To me the following is even better then the widget.
http://twitter....E/statuses.json
or
http://twitter....ME/statuses.xml
This is Twitter’s “YouTube Moment”
http://www.cybe...youtube-moment/
I can’t get it to connect to Facebook. It gets re-directed every time.
I am excited to see what new app twitter will come out with, they are always so neat to play around with