Update 5/11/11: Before you use Formulists please read my update and the comments at the bottom of this post.
Call it a 2011 New Years Resolution if you must but one of my goals for this year is to do a better job of managing my Twitter feed. Â I’m trying to get ahead of it before it turns into the next email management problem.
To date I’ve been reading every single Tweet that comes through but unfortunately that is increasingly becoming more challenging. Â There are many topical accounts I follow (ie outdoors sports, beer, local news, etc.) that needs to take a back burner to the individuals who are sharing more valuable to my role at uTest on a regular basis. Â I’ll still read every beer post but it might only happen Friday nights for example.
Step one of this organization is utilizing Twitter lists – making sure that everyone has been included into one or more categories. Â The challenge I’ve found to date is figuring out how to manage 500+ people and I finally just stumbled onto a tool that makes this process much easier for me – Formulists.com (@Formulists).
What Formulists allows me to do is create a list of everyone I follow excluding those who I have already added onto specific lists. Â The end result is essentially a “to sort” list. Â My goal is to get this new list down to zero (currently 362). Â One of the nicest things about Formulists is that it’s dynamic so as I pick away at the list and follow more people the “to sort” list will continue to update.
Below is a screenshot of the list creation process:
By the end of Q1, hopefully I’ll be caught up and able to read every tweet and save my sanity.
Update 5/11/11: Formulists was great to organize existing followers but it seems incapable to responsibly handle any new-follow requests.  This morning while playing with it and looking for new people to follow Formulists essentially spammed all of the people I follow (some for four years) that I’m just now following them.  While many friends laugh at the email alert there are a lot of people (nearly 1,000) that will have a negative impression of me just following them now. Lesson learned: when trying to build close relationships be very leery of trusting a 3rd party tool to help. [See additional comments below]
15 thoughts on “Best Twitter List Management Tool: @Formulists [Updated]”
Just as I’d assumed would happen, nothing good lasts (free) forever. I once used Formulists and just a week ago I realized my lists weren’t updated. Went to check why and now I’m only allowed two lists for free. Am I paying for this? Nope.
I’m still using it for free (not sure if there was any changes to the product) but I can’t update “on demand” with a free account.
How are you hoping to use the list? I might be able to help with an ideal workaround.
Hi Patricia and Matt,
If you had lists created before the pro option was introduced then they should still be around and updating. However, the issue might be due to the fact that for a while we offered “trial pro versions” where people were able to access pro features (including making 20 lists) for the trial period. One the period was over, if they did not decide to go pro, extra lists would be emptied. Due to some of the confusion this caused we have since gotten rid of the trial period, though perhaps this was the cause of the issue? We also require non-pro users to sign in every two months just to signal to us that they are still using the lists and would like them to continue updating.
You can also get up to five more free lists by referring other users: http://formulists.com/settings#/referrals
Hope that helps,
Natalie from Formulists
Natalie, I’m both pleased and impressed that you showed up and chimed in. When I signed up, there was no pro version and there was no trial for a pro version. I don’t know exactly when the pro version came out but I’ve been using Formulists for well over a year now and if you need an approximate date, I can even dig up the first communications I made about it in a LinkedIn group, sharing how amazing the app was.
So no, I was never using a trial. I was definitely using the app before there was even a pro version mentioned.
@twitter-20577623:disqus ,
Just upgraded to the Pro… and had to cancel in under one hour. @Formulists:disqus emailed everyone I was following that I am now following them. I received four emails/tweets within 30 minutes of close friends asking what the problem was but it would have emailed approximately 1,000 other people the same false message.
$1/month is nominal but the cost of such an error is simply too large of a liability. I have since cancelled my Pro subscription and am now uncertain if I’ll trust Formulists (free) going forward.
It’s unfortunate since it’s such a good tool for segmenting lists and finding new people to follow. I’m looking to build meaningful relationships with people over Twitter and Formulists basically just made everyone question whether I was disinterested in them.
Matt
LOL! I just told ya about the change. Previously we could have as many lists as we wanted. Now, you can only have two for free. If you want more, you have to sign up for a premium account. Log in and find out.
I’m not seeing the changes you’ve mentioned – mine were automatically
updated last night.
Matt, how many lists do you have in Formulists? How many?
Matt, how many lists do you have in Formulists? How many?
I haven’t gotten very consistently creative yet. I have one list I play
around with and one permanent list. The latter is a list of followers that
I haven’t organized onto one of several manually-made lists (i.e. must read,
beer geeks, uTest employees, etc.)
Just curious, how do you use it and like it other than the free-to-play
limitations?
Hmm, well play around with it and see what turns up. I was shocked at the 2-list limit just the other day but received no message until I tried to add a new one, then in red it said no can do.
But how do I like it? I think it’s just a brilliant idea. For instance, I set up one list that I use to send out a particular message only to people looking for xyz. That list automatically updates so that I’m only sending that message to people who tweeted in the last week or month or whatever. That way, I’m not constantly messing around with upkeeping my list and getting the message out to my targets. I can spend that time elsewhere.
There’s another list manager out there called Tweetbe.at which seems to be working with the same premise but it doesn’t seem to be working. Their version of the automatically updated lists is called Smart Lists.
Thanks for the tips. If you’re looking for alternatives more OneForty.com
has a lot of Twitter tools including list managers.
http://oneforty.com/search?query=twitter%20list%20manager&facet_types%5B%5D=category&facet_fields%5B%5D=Manage%20Followers
[Warning: you can spend a lot of time playing with all the tools in their
directory!]
LOL! Where do you think I found Tweetbe.at the other day?? Yes, a whole lotta OAuth goin’ on and playing with the tools.
The sad part is sometimes you get used to one or two and think you’re done and then one starts whimping out. Like now I use Twaitter. I like it for scheduling although the one I used to use (forgot the name) was better and disappeared. Now I find this one is down more than up so I’m now on the hunt for something else.
Will it ever, ever end, Matt? A pleasure chattin’ with ya. Let’s hook up (LOL!) outside of this blog. Meet me at FB or Twitter, or both. http://www.facebook.com/NixonVS or http://www.facebook.com/PatriciaRNixon or http://twitter.com/NVStweets
any free alternative of formulist?