TLists indexes Twitter Lists and provides curation tools

[Update: I got the details of the Apply to List function wrong, and have updated the post accordingly. For more details, please see Claudia's comment below.]

The Twitter Lists feature offers users the ability to group Twitter accounts together in any way that they choose. However, another use of Twitter Lists is to follow a list of Twitter accounts that someone else puts together. In fact, this is a fantastic way to quickly gain access to a lot of tweets on a given subject.

But how do you know what list to follow? Will you drown under the volume of tweets being posted? Who's in charge of who is or isn't on the list? TLists is a service that is attempting to make working with Twitter Lists a little bit easier. For readers, you can search TLists for a given topic and see lists related to that topic. Each list shows how many members the list has, how many people are following it, approximately how many tweets are generated per day by the list, and even the most commonly used words and hash tags.

Beyond just finding lists to follow, TLists offers a strange an "Apply to List" function as well. Clicking the Apply to List button on any list's entry will send an email create an @ mention to the owner of that list, letting them know that you would like to be considered for inclusion in their list. The email doesn't tell the list's owner who is applying, but presumably redirects them to TLists for more information.

This doesn't feel right to me.

I suppose the value here is that users can get in touch with a list owner without being seen publicly as begging for inclusion in the list. If I was the curator of an important list, though, I wouldn't want random, anonymous messages from TLists begging for my attention. There's nothing stopping a Twitter user from contacting a list owner directly using their @username, except for possible embarrassment. Although, as far as I'm concerned, that embarrassment works for the list owners. TLists is just making it easier for random people to spam list owners with requests for inclusion by removing the negative connotation around the request.

It also works in TLists' favor to have their users randomly initiate contact between TLists and influential Twitter list owners. They can have their service ask for attention from these people while not actually taking responsibility for the contact. It's brilliant, I guess, but it feels wrong.

TLists is a great resource if you're looking for information about Twitter Lists on various topics, but I would personally suggest avoiding the "Apply to List" feature.

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Tags: anonymous messages, AnonymousMessages, curator, email, finding lists, FindingLists, list owner, ListOwner, microb