14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter has now officially launched and announced one of its most eagerly awaited features, Twitter Lists. The feature has been in beta for a while now and it has been rolled out to all users during the past couple of days allowing them to group the people they follow and to easily share them with their friends.
“We’re putting the finishing touches on our new Lists feature and we're really excited about the folks who have already taken a lot of time creating awesome lists. From the @time list of funny people to your own list of people who make you laugh - it's easy to see how this feature increases discovery and adds value in lots of ways,” Twitter cofounder Biz Stone wrote announcing the launch.
The feature is already becoming popular as people start creating and sharing their lists and searching to see what others have come up with. With the full-blown roll out, Twitter also enabled users to see who has added them to one of their lists. Lists is interesting enough on its own, but the real value is delivered by the API that comes with it. And with reports saying as much as half of Twitter users connecting through mobile or desktop clients and not through the site, it is easy to see why the API is crucial to the feature's success.
In fact, Twitter is probably more interested in the API that comes with Lists than the implementation on the website. And now with the website out of the way, Twitter is focusing 100 percent on the platform. Stone says a number of developers have already taken advantage of the feature but everyone is waiting for support from the major apps like TweetDeck or Seesmic, which should be coming sooner rather than later. And, as always, the apps' implementations are bound to be better than the one on the site that still has some significant flaws.
"We’ve been taking our time rolling out the lists feature to make sure things go smoothly and developers have a chance to begin experimenting with our Lists API. For example, TLISTS will provide tools to efficiently build, measure and distribute Lists, while Listorious hosts a directory of 'awesome lists' on Twitter," Stone added.