Twitter List Triad Part 1: Why you need them

This post attempts to answer the question: Why should I make Twitter Lists? It will not cover step-by-step instructions for creating lists. If that’s what you are looking for, please check out this excellent post by Mashable. And then come right back!

Like millions of other Twitterers, I spent a good chunk of my weekend working with the newly launched Twitter Lists. Twitter Lists allow all of us to create up to 20 lists. Once set up, we can designate the list either private or public and assign different Twitterers to whatever lists we feel apply to them.

How you use Twitter Lists depends entirely on how you use Twitter. When using Twitter on my own behalf (as opposed to using it on behalf of my clients), I rely on it to identify, connect and interact with like-minded marketers. I also rely on our collective good judgement to sift through the thousands of marketing articles we come across each day and to filter out and flag the gems that are worth reading. Given that, how could Twitter Lists help me?

Being a strategist at heart, the fist thing I asked myself was: “Why make lists in the fist place?” After all, I have already sliced, diced and segmented my followers on TweetDeck. Why do it again?

The biggest reason is that my TweetDeck lists do not follow me around to the other Twitter apps I use. Presumably, all Twitter apps will incorporate lists in the weeks and months to come. Aside from Listorious (an online app dedicated to Twitter lists), I believe Seesmic is the first mainstream Twitter app to incorporate lists. TweetDeck has announced they will be incorporating lists soon and I suspect Tweetie and others won’t be far behind.

So although I’m OK with my groups on TweetDeck now, I’m creating lists to hedge against future developments. Of course, this assumes I will keep using Twitter, but that’s pretty much a given. And since the number of followers we all have tends to grow, I figure getting my Twitter house in order now will pay back dividends in both effectiveness and time savings later on.

For the final verdict, ask me a year from now if the hassle of spending my weekend sorting followers into 20 boxes was worth it. Until then,what's your take?  Why do you think its worth the hassle to create lists (or not)?

Read Part Two: Twitter Lists Triad Part 2: Four types of Twitter Lists and how to use them

Read Part Three: Twitter Lists Triad Part 3: Six Twitter List Revelations