Twitter lists have been around for a couple weeks now and until this point I only somewhat understood how to effectively use them. When they first came out I jumped in, made a few lists of my own and moved on not taking any significant time to explore them until now. What I have since found are that Twitter lists can be very useful.

It’s a known fact that following any number of people can produce a lot of noise. Add business Twitter accounts to the stream and many Tweets are drowned out and never read. The thing is, sometimes the noise is a benefit providing a shared link, resource or inspiration. Twitter lists allows the best of both worlds, the ability to organize groups of followers into broad or very defined categories to easily view a specific live feed of Tweets through the Twitter.com site. Previously the best method for oranizing groups of people or businesses on Twitter was to use a 3rd party services like Tweetdeck, Seesmic or Twibes. With lists being centralized at Twitter.com it makes them much more public, powerful and accessible through the Twitter API.

Brilliant. Here’s where I think it gets interesting, as Twitter lists grow in popularity they are becoming a very important metric to determine Twitter credibility and a great way to discover people and brands within nearly any category. The new site Listorious has jumped at the task of organizing lists for discovery. I’m excited to see how this plays out, I see some very popular category lists forming that will be valuable to sort just about any topic.

Here’s some continued reading…

• 10 ways you can use Twitter lists: http://mashable.com/2009/11/04/twitter-lists-uses/
• What Twitter lists say about you: http://www.mustexist.com/list_tags
• Top Twitter users based on followers: http://twitterholic.com/
• Top 237 Twitter users who will follow you back: http://socialnewswatch.com/top-twitter-users/
• Directory of the best Twitter lists: http://listorious.com/