You may or may not have heard about one of the newest Twitter features called Lists. We are quite excited about this feature over on the webteam as it will allow us to “move” the functionality that we are aiming for with the GVSU Social Media page to an actual Twitter function. We were already maintaining this list of different departments on campus that have official department Twitter accounts. This provided a one stop location to find all of the official accounts but there was no way to be alerted when changes to the list occurred. We thought about providing an RSS feed so followers could stay up to date with new accounts but this will actually be better in the long run. You have the ability to “follow” a list just as you have the ability to follow as specific person on Twitter. The difference being when we add people to the list, then you automatically get their updates because you are following our list. Pretty cool eh?
What do we have so far? We have two lists started and will continue to add to them as the GVSU community expands their Twitter presence.
- The department list will contain all official accounts of GVSU departments on campus.
- The student life list will contain all the various parts of the Office of Student Life as they have multiple avenues to promote student events on campus.
If you have a department on campus that is missing from either of these lists, please feel free to let me know via email (stoikeer at gvsu dot edu).
So what’s the catch? Well, Twitter has provided us with this great new feature BUT… right now basically the only place you can see the updates from (or follow) these lists is on the website. If you are using a client such as Seesmic, Twhirl, Twitterific, Tweetdeck or Tweetie (just to name a few) then you will not be able to see updates from the lists you follow until those products update to accommodate the new feature. Right now, Seesmic is the only one that has made the necessary update enabling you to see these updates.
So basically, stay tuned! We are working on our end and just have to wait for a few software companies to figure things out on their end.
