Twitter Lists: What Good Are they?

Apologies to those who have read this before in a previous post but I thought I'd break it out and provide updates when I find new, interesting things to do with lists. Came up with a new one recently so thought I'd add...

Twitter Lists
People have been trying to figure out lists since Twitter introduced them. I'm still figuring it out. I do tend to use/organize lists differently on Twitter web than I use, say, groups in TweetDeck. The ones I've made public are for the benefit of those who follow who are looking to follow certain categories (including myself!). But I'm doing/thought of some interesting things to do with private lists that I thought would be worth sharing:

• Build a "must-reads" list. Thanks to the computer situation around the house (and sometimes, the time I have to check Twitter), I don't always have TweetDeck at my disposal. I only follow about 300 folks but that can be a lot to try to read/catch up on if I've been away for a bunch of hours. With Tweetdeck it's easy, especially if you skim past "conversations." I will freely admit that there are those whose tweets I don't want to miss, especially some who don't tweet so often. So I have built a private "must-read" list that I can go-to during quick check-ins. It's worked great...just trying to settle on the sweet-spot of how many I can put on that list before it becomes burdensome.
• Start an "ungrouped" list. I love Tweetdeck, but one area that is notoriously bad in it is group/following management. They have the whole "new followers" column thingie, but still there are times where I may decide to follow folks from the Twitter interface. When I do that, I always have to remember to go into TweetDeck and search the person so I can add them to a group. Not any more with my "ungrouped" list. I put new follows in there, then pull it up in Tweetdeck to see who I still need to "group." And Tweetdeck does have a nice means to move people to/from lists/groups.
  
• "Anonymously follow." I don't do this (yet) but I can see where this could be a neat feature of lists. One of the neat things about lists is that you don't need to follow everyone who is on your lists. So you could conceivably add folks to a private list without actually following them and keep up with their tweets without their name showing up in your "following" & yours in their "followers" list.
• "Mobile (TXT) Management" For those of us in the growing minority without smart phones/data plans who use the SMS interface at times to interact with Twitter, it can be a real bear to manage. I have a limited text plan myself so I don't just have all tweets coming to my phone. But, for example, when I go to a concert and I follow the band members on Twitter I like to see their updates show up. But Twitter does not make it easy to turn on mobile updates on a user-by-user basis. So why not use a list for this? You still need to pull up the person's profile to enable mobile notifications, but at the same time you put them in a private list called "mobile." That way, you have an active list of people whose tweets are coming to your phone (provided you remember to take them off the list when you turn mobile notifications off!)
  

That's about it for this post. Appreciate comments and your suggestions on things you do with lists!

It's a Small World After All...

...thanks to the Internet! Those of you who follow this blog (I'm talking to both of you) will remember that I recently put my North drum set up on Craigslist. I picked Craigslist because it's free and it's kinda local. I didn't want to have to be responsible for packing those beasts for shipment. Got a guy in Boston who was looking to grab just part of the set. I wasn't too keen on doing that because I felt I had no chance to sell just pieces of the set locally. He offered me a price that was fair for the number of drums he wanted, and found I could do okay with the remainder (thanks to a North-drums related Yahoo! group). He also offered to come pick them up.

I was on the verge of taking it when I got an e-mail from a guy calling himself Phoebus. The e-mail simply asked if the drum set was still available. I'm thinking "interesting nickname," then go to his website and find that is his actual name and that he's a big-time songwriter/producer...in Greece (as in Athens, not the Rochester NY suburb). As in multiple platinum records to his name and described by many as the go-to guy if you want a hit song. Realizing I don't have a random crackpot on my hands I decide to write him back, telling him I have a deal pending and that it would take a good offer for me to back out of that. Oh and I'm not keen on shipping.

He offers my asking price for the set (the entire set) and says he'll try to arrange for a friend in NY to pick it up. I decide to counter-offer by telling him I could take it to a UPS Store (not an option for most as they are normally unwilling to pay the packing rates). He said no problem, so we worked through the course of a couple weeks swapping e-mails back-and-forth with the details, while I figured out the best means to package and ship (many thanks to Rick at Orcon Industries in Leroy for getting custom boxes together for me!) and today I shipped the drums! In the process I learned a lot more about International shipping, USPS shipping limits and "dimensional weight" than I ever thought I would! Phoebus was a supremely nice guy to deal with, patiently answering my ignorant questions despite a very busy work and home life. I really hope he enjoys the drums!

So to summarize: guy in middle-of-nowhere NY posts an ad to the Rochester Craigslist and ends up selling to a mega-producer in Athens Greece. Exactly what I expected to have happen when I listed them...