Can Twitter Lists improve your credibility?

Short Answer-- Yes.   Lists are one of those things that people are going to use to get an unbiased opinion of a user/brand/account.  If someone adds me to a list (which is somewhat manual) they're assigning me some amount of credibility to exist, and they are also categorizing my relationship.

For example, I may have a list for friends, one for family, and then a few work related like Brands, Loyalty, Cooking.  If someone looks at Sobeys twitter page and sees that it's listed on a bunch of random peoples lists, and the things that people have

their lists are keywords like Canada, Cooking, Shopping, Brand, or whatever--- that's essentially a public opinion poll and keyword research about the account in question.  Credibility.

If I look at an account that I think is spammy, and they appear on NO lists, not friends, not family, nothing work related-- I have to think that maybe they're either really new, know nobody, or are spam.  I'm going to think twice.

The next step I see in this evolution is a feature addition for twitter that will actually ALLOW keyword searches.  Say I want to find tweeple that fit on lists with keywords like Canada, Shopping-- it shows me a bunch of people

, not just people who have

they are shopping related (spammers), all of the sudden I have a more authentic experience, and probably some more reliable descriptions of what an account actually is about.

The difference between these lists, and twitter two months ago is that before is was "Here's what I think I am" and now it's "Here's what other people think I am".   Just like any marketer knows, your brand is mostly what people think of it, and a little bit about what you tell people it is.

The problem arises when people start to put you on lists that you don't want to be on.  Not sure that Twitter has thought of that yet...

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