Thoughts on Lists, Feeds and Search
I’ve been skeptical about Threads directly copying X’s Lists feature and it having a massive engagement impact.
Because of this stance, I’ve gotten really thoughtful pushback from great Threaders like Sara Montour Lewis (@saramontourlewus) and Berrak Sarikya (@berrakbiz) stating why Lists is an important feature for Threads to launch.
I recently mentioned that I thought an auto-generated dedicated feed for specific topics or interests would be an ideal feature to launch. Obviously, this sounds similar to Lists. As the discussion of Lists came up again, Sara asked a very good question: why is an auto-generated topic feed better than just search (that worked on Threads)?
This blog is an opportunity to share my thoughts about Lists, Feeds and Search in the context of X/Twitter and Threads.
Important Context: I’ve never worked at Twitter. IMO Twitter didn’t reach its full potential as a text-based platform because it was inaccessible to most internet users for a variety of reasons. I was a power user on Twitter for several years and loved the product for most of my time using it.
I think Lists as designed by X/Twitter is a power user-focused feature for alternative feed use cases. Given the investment to create and curate, there is a lock-in effect for those power users and retention value for the platform. There is a secondary benefit for users in which it allows them to access a curated feed of posts from specific accounts on a related topic, event or interest.
Threads launched in July 2023 and Lists on Threads became a topic of discussion on its feed shortly thereafter. In some of these discussions, ex-Twitter employees that have shared that Lists didn’t materially increase or impact engagement on the platform and that Twitter never truly invested in Lists. The engagement point directly conflicts with the point of view of a number of former Twitter power users on Threads: Lists did drive engagement on the platform!
Since I and other former Twitter power users are not privy to internal data on Lists, we should start from the premise that the ex-Tweeps are right in their assessment of Lists. So why would Lists not materially impact engagement on Twitter even though millions of users used it?
If I had to guess, there were two reasons:
Misunderstanding of the core problem:
The core problem to be solved is “who should I follow for XYZ interest, event or topic separate from the main feed.”
The true value of Lists is providing a curated feed of engaging posts by specific accounts. It’s not the creation and curation of Lists.
Many more people have the problem of wanting a curated feed than creating a curated feed, but Lists UX functions mainly from the perspective of solving the problem of creating a curated feed first rather than solving the feed consumption problem.
In hindsight, focusing on helping users create a curated feed may have been the only viable path to solving the more valuable consumption problem when Lists were first created.
Lack of onboarding and consumer education for Lists
Because Lists UX functions more from the perspective of the creator of the List than the consumer, there was no intentional onboarding mechanisms put in place for consumers to understand what Lists are and why there are useful. That onus is put on the List creator. Most discovery and utilization of Lists is organic. Yes, there is a Lists tab in X, but if you were/are new to X/Twitter do you know what a List is and what to do with it? Consumer education is critical for possibly new and unfamiliar features.
It makes sense that Lists usage was/is low from overall platform engagement perspective. Twitter didn’t promote Lists at all (my assumption is that was intentional) and the feature probably performed poorly (ie. low adoption and usage compared to other Twitter features). Eventually, there was no sustained product team investment.
An aside: I mention compared to other Twitter features because that is really important to understanding why some Twitter features continued to evolve and get better over time and why other features stagnated or were eventually sunset.
So back to the original question: why dedicated topics feeds and not just search?
Chronological search is a must for Threads. I’ve seen the light on this topic.
Search and dedicated topic feeds are solving for different problems IMO.
Search solves for the need to see all relevant posts by chronological order or reverse chronological order regardless of popularity or curation.
Dedicated topic feeds are curated feeds specifically designed for the need to see relevant, but curated and engaging posts from accounts related to a topic.
It’s the difference between searching Spotify for all R&B songs and seeing a playlist for the top R&B songs based on listening history when you open the app. And even if you search all R&B songs, Spotify will still recommend a playlist of the top R&B song because it is likely to engage and delight you more than just a generic list of R&B song results.
So it’s NO for Lists and YES to dedicated topic feeds?
Not necessarily. I think there is real retention value and user happiness for power users to be found if Threads launched an improved Lists feature that was properly promoted and explained to users in the app and website.
My only caveat is that the more impactful user growth and business opportunity would likely be found in providing a dedicated topic feed feature (curated by ML/AI + human moderators) to users. A dedicated feed feature focused entirely on solving the “I need a curated feed for topic X” problem would perform better on engagement metrics IMO because of the platform-level insights, ranking and UX control that Threads would have vs a user-generated List. And if you’re going to spend the effort and time building a feature, you’re going to choose the solution that solves the problem AND provides the biggest business opportunity.