By Evan Woods

Twitter's new list function has been in beta for a few weeks, and yesterday Twitter made it available to all users. So what are lists?

Lists are a really interesting new way to organize people you like and to get other people to notice you (like everything on twitter). You can see people’s lists that they give titles too, and when you click on these lists you see the members who are part of that list and their tweets.  In  this way, a list is sort of like a microcosm in which only the people on the list can tweet (these are the only ones seen). You can view lists on another users homepage or also on your home page.  Following someone’s list does not mean you follow them, or the people in the list. 

Everyone also has a “listed” count on their twitter home page (as seen above), showing how many people on twitter have listed them. This is essentially very similar to followers: the more people who list you, the more popular you are/the more you are liked. The goal is to have interesting lists, get listed as much as possible, and subscribe to lists that share your interests.

You can also look at other people’s lists to follow people of a similar category.  Here is what a list looks like on someone’s page:

Check out Listorious for a growing directory of Lists.