14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter Lists were rolled out over the weekend to all users and they've proven a huge success so far. Maybe it's the fact that Twitter implements important features like this one very, very slowly, or maybe it's just the fact that the feature is proving very useful to most users. It's probably a combination of the two, but, in any case, there are about 6.5 million lists created so far and it's already showing a different picture on just who's influential on the microblogging platform and who isn't.
Twitter doesn't provide any useful numbers related to the Lists feature, but a specific Google search, as the Next Web blog reports, shows that the number of Lists URLs is getting close to the 6.5-million mark. These, of course, are just the public Lists but, seeing how Twitter makes sure that every page on the site has a very SEO-friendly URL, which can't really be said about the rest of the site, the number is accurate enough.
It will be interesting to see how the feature evolves over time and if users will begin to see the number of people that lists them as important as the number of their followers, or even more so, but, so far, it has shown a rather interesting side of Twitter, proving that a huge number of followers doesn't necessarily translate into relevance. The ImpactWatch blog decided to see if the ranking in the top 100 Twitter users by followers numbers would translate in a similar ranking based on the number of Lists they had been included in.
Turns out that the Lists top is quite a bit different, though it is obvious that the more followers you have, the more likely you are of being included in a list. From the top 100, US President Barack Obama ranks as the most listed Twitter user, despite being only in the seventh place in the followers top, with over 12,000 lists. Peter Cashmore, aka the Mashable social media blog, comes in the second place with over 8,700 lists, while placing 31 in the followers top.
Note that these aren't necessarily the most listed users, they're the most listed users from the top 100 by followers. These numbers are likely to change fast, as the Lists feature is only a few days old and it will be nice to see these stats coming from Twitter directly, but it's clear that the Lists will change the microblogging service quite significantly.