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An Early Look at News Media Twitter Lists: Not Much Traction

November 3, 2009 by Adam Sherk

With all the buzz about Twitter Lists I thought I’d take a look at how some major news sites are doing so far with their own Lists.

Looking at selection of Twitter accounts from 30 31 news sites, I checked the number of Lists that have been created and how many followers each has attracted to-date. These figures will change quite a bit in the weeks and months to come, but I wanted to capture an initial snapshot. (Note: currently Twitter allows users to create a maximum of 20 Lists.)

Twitter account
(Lists page)
Lists CreatedAverage # of followersMost followers
(on one List)
wsj20722
latimes18827
nytimes1688650
huffingtonpost151338
pbs1135
usatoday11320
cnn554138
msnbc479
time4103307
abc235
coloneltribune2712
telegraphnews21924
foxnews188
newsweek144
theeconomist133
usnews100
bbcnews000
breakingnews000
bw000
cbsnews000
chicagotribune000
cnnbrk000
ft000
guardian000
mailonline000
nbcnews000
npr000
reuters000
theindynews000
timesonline000
washingtonpost000

As can be seen it is still early days for both Twitter List creation and user adoption.

As of today half of the news sites have not created any Lists, and only four sites have more than 10. The average number of followers is still very low, and all of the Lists have less than 1,000 followers (many of them significantly less). The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Huffington Post have done the most so far with List development.

It will be interesting to see how things evolve over time.

Related posts:

  1. The Most Popular NFL Teams on Twitter and Facebook
  2. The Most Popular MLB Teams on Twitter and Facebook
  3. An Early Look at Facebook Open Graph Protocol Integration on News Sites
  4. Diversified Twitter Strategies for News Sites
  5. News Sites on Twitter: Who is Making the Most Impact?

Comments

  1. Craig Kanalley says

    November 3, 2009 at 8:55 pm

    Interesting, and kind of sad that @BreakingTweets, even with just three lists, is doing more than many of these news organizations.

    I’d also say @PBS should be added to this table. They’ve created about a dozen lists so far.

    Nice roundup. I’m sure this will change drastically in time, but it’s clear who the early adopters are.

  2. Adam Sherk says

    November 4, 2009 at 10:08 am

    Thanks Craig, I added @pbs to the table.

  3. Daniel says

    November 5, 2009 at 4:23 pm

    I still think it remains to be seen how news organizations really plan to use these lists. Certainly the NY Times is paving the way, but I’m curious as to what they’ll do with them, how they’ll promote them externally, etc.

  4. Adam Sherk says

    November 5, 2009 at 6:02 pm

    Good point Daniel – it will be interesting to see what kind of Lists users find most valuable. For example making a List for the entire editorial staff is a popular first step right now. But since larger organizations cover a wide range of topics, will such a List be too broad to be engaging? Making Lists for specific beats brings more focus, but the average person tweets about a lot more than just their area of coverage (including a lot of random, personal stuff). So even those Lists will have a lot of noise on them.

  5. Daniel says

    November 5, 2009 at 6:06 pm

    Also, how comfortable will news organizations be linking to other sources? To reporters’ sources? If we’re truly in an era of open-source journalism, I say reporters share their access (sort of) to sources via Twitter lists.

    This isn’t to say the sources will RESPOND, but it’s an interesting way of opening one’s reporter notebook to a willing audience.

  6. Daniel says

    November 5, 2009 at 6:08 pm

    (By the way, I’m not sure if you know who I am, but I saw you commented on this Fast Company story about “Inspired Social Media Profiles,” and Colonel Tribune was one of the profiles. I created it, and found this blog through a quick Google search.

    Thanks for the kind words on the FC article!

  7. Adam Sherk says

    November 5, 2009 at 6:30 pm

    I’m definitely in favor of using Twitter to let readers “behind the curtain” a bit in terms of the development process behind particular stories, sharing additional info that didn’t make the article, etc. In terms of sharing access to sources, in some cases confidentiality comes into play, but there could be instances where that might add value and potentially give stories continued life once they are published. In terms of linking out to other news orgs, when it makes sense in a conversation I say absolutely. Publishers are getting better at doing that on-site too.

    I didn’t realize it was you who created @ColonelTribune, I use that often as an example of a successful persona (in fact I mentioned in this post on diversified Twitter strategies for news sites).

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About Adam Sherk

Adam Sherk is an SEO and PR consultant helping publishers with digital strategy and audience development, including enterprise SEO, public relations and social media marketing.

Adam is VP SEO and Digital Strategy for Define Media Group.

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