Twitter Lists – Do they change influence measures?

The roll out of Lists to all twitter users happened last week, and this has, to some extent, changed the rules of engagement on the microblogging site. Patterns of influence and spread of information can no longer be tracked by a simple recourse to followers and followees; now the patterns of list membership have to be taken into account as well.

If you are on more lists, does this increase your influence on twitter?  Or is it a sign of an influence that was previously unrecognised, simply because it was unmeasured and unmeasurable? It certainly seems to be true that the more diverse your posts, the more lists you are likely to be put on.  For example, I show up on lists with titles such as Bristol, Market Research, Social Media, and Africa; in a couple of cases, one person has created more than one list. Does this, and my inclusion on 22 lists, mean I am influential?

I think it is a measure of influence, but not the only one possible.  I believe that @mentions and RT’s remain an important measure of influenc, along with the ratio of followees to followers – in the latter case, an influential person would have a ratio of less than one, showing that they have more followers than people they are following, a sign that people are finding them, rather than the person going out and following large numbers of people (by this measure, I am not particularly influential at the moment, as my ratio is slightly over 1).

But – why does influence matter? The way I see influence working on twitter – my definition of it – is the number of people your message can go out to through two or three steps of retweeting.  So if you have a small following, and are on a small number of lists, made up primarily of people with small followings, then your message will only have the potential of being seen by a small number of people.  If, on the other hand, you are on lists that are followed by people with large followings, that changes everything.  Lets say, for example, Stephen Fry does not follow you, but does follow a list you are on.  This increases the chances of him seeing your message; whether he retweets it depends on the content.

Lists, therefore, increase te potential reach of your message, beyond the limit of the (relatively, unless you are Ashton Kutcher of Stephen Fry) small number of people who follow you, and, as a result, being on a list should increase your influence in the twitter sphere.